He lived on his parents’ farm on the edge of Ashfield, and he worked there every weekend and all through the holidays—and the hard, physical work made him fitter and tougher than anyone else of his age.
He was wonderful in just about every way, Clemmie had decided. In fact, there was only one blot on the landscape, and that was Alison Fleming, his girlfriend.
Clemmie had found out as much as she could without seeming too obvious. The facts were simple. Aleck had been going out with Alison Fleming for six months, and in that time he had not looked at another female. Worse was to follow. Alison Fleming was very beautiful, with pale, turquoise eyes and a mass of honey-coloured hair which always hung in an immaculate gleaming bell to her shoulders.
Clemmie did everything in her power to get Aleck to notice her, motivated by a deviousness she’d been unaware she possessed. She hung around unobtrusively until she saw him leave the building—with or without Alison—and then she would saunter along home on the opposite side of the road, with her long red-brown hair flying wildly and her skirt rolled over twice at the waistband so that it showed yards of long, stockinged leg.
She joined the School Debating Society, of which he was the Chairperson. The only problem being that whenever he was in the room all Clemmie’s brilliantly thought-out arguments went straight out of her head, and she stared at him, totally tongue-tied. It certainly put her off a career in public speaking!
But as time went on, and the end of the year approached, Clemmie gradually began to accept that maybe the love affair she longed for just wasn’t meant to be. Aleck would be leaving soon, and going off to university. And not alone either—but with Alison. He obviously just wasn’t interested in any other girl. Although sometimes, sometimes, Clemmie could have sworn that she had seen him giving her a hard, slanting look from beneath the dark lashes which shaded those amazing blue-green eyes of his.
It might have all died a quiet death had it not been for the night of the Summer Ball on the last night of term, which was thrown in honour of all those who were leaving the school. Clemmie didn’t particularly want to go—seeing Aleck for the last time, with his arms draped around Alison, would be like subjecting herself to the most awful form of torture.
In the end, she was persuaded to go by her mother.
‘You must go, Clemmie.’ Hilary Powers frowned at her daughter. ‘You’re always complaining that there’s nothing to do around here, and now you’re turning down the opportunity to go to a really nice dance!’
Clemmie turned her mouth down. What could she say? That she’d fallen hook, line and sinker for a man who was besotted with someone else?
‘And I’ll give you money for a new dress,’ smiled Dan. ‘How about that?’
Clemmie couldn’t win.
She bought a dress which was absolutely beautiful but left very little to the imagination. A black silk slip dress, beneath which she could wear only the briefest of black lace thongs.
‘Do you like it?’ she asked her mother.
Her mother screwed her face up and looked at her daughter. Pale face, too many freckles, dark hair spilling down like mahogany satin—gorgeous! But the dress? ‘I’m not sure, darling. It’s a bit revealing.’
‘Gee, thanks, Mum!’ scowled Clemmie. ‘You do wonders for my confidence!’ What was it with mothers, sometimes?
‘Are you wearing a bra?’
‘I can’t wear a bra—it shows!’
‘Then I’ll lend you my black chiffon wrap,’ said her mother briskly. ‘You can throw that round your neck and look slightly more decent.’
Clemmie got ready with Mary Adams from her year, the two of them standing giggling and shaking with nerves as Clemmie swept unfamiliarly thick mascara onto her dark lashes. She was so nervous that she accepted a glass of wine from the cask in Mary’s fridge, and then another. By the time she arrived at the dance she was floating, floating—and danced with every single boy who asked her.
Too giddy and too excited to eat, she glugged back a glass of the fruity punch she was given and tried not to look at Alison Fleming, who was demure and stunning in virginal white. While Aleck looked like the only real man in the room, his height and build and bearing making him seem like warm flesh and blood, while the others all looked like cardboard cut-outs.
Clemmie was on her way back from the rest room, moving slightly unsteadily along the corridor with her eyes glittering darkly against the dead-pale of her cheeks, when she saw Aleck.
He was standing with his back to her, standing perfectly still by the window of an empty, unlit classroom. His old classroom.
Clemmie drew in a deep breath of longing. She should go straight past. He wasn’t interested. He had a girlfriend.
But the wine and the punch had loosened her tongue and this was probably the last time she would ever see him.
‘Hi,’ she said recklessly, standing illuminated in the bright light of the corridor.
Aleck turned round slowly, his eyes flickering over her in a way she didn’t quite understand. If he was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. But then, his face rarely showed anything, and it certainly didn’t now.
‘Hi,’ he said coolly.
Clemmie gulped and walked over to stand beside him at the window, which overlooked the tennis courts and the soccer pitches beyond. She wondered what this school would be like next year, with no Aleck Cutler to gaze at, to think about, to fantasise over... It didn’t really bear thinking about.
‘So,’ she said, and stared out into the night as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. ‘What are you looking at?’
He gave a small laugh, then shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
Clemmie felt bold. ‘Yes, you were!’ she teased. ‘I saw you.’
He found himself smiling reluctantly. She was as exuberant as a puppy. ‘Okay, then,’ he admitted. ‘I was just looking out at that old house. See?’
She followed the direction of his eyes but she knew which house he was talking about. The tumbledown house which dominated the town. From her bedroom window in Dan’s house, Clemmie would look down at the overgrown lawns, the flowerbeds which were choked with weeds. In autumn, the fruit fell from the apple and pear trees, lying ignored and rotting on the ground. It was a sad house, she had often thought. A neglected house. ‘You mean the old grey one? Isn’t it supposed to be haunted?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t believe in all that stuff! It’s only spooky because no one’s lived in it for years.’
‘I wonder why?’ she queried softly.
Aleck looked at her, finding her ridiculously easy to talk to and yet sensing some unknown danger in the air. ‘Because it’s big. And it’s run-down—you’d need serious money to update it and run it. People with that kind of money don’t generally want to live in a small town like Ashfield.’
‘But you do?’ she asked perceptively.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
There was silence for a moment, though Clemmie could hear her heart booming out in a muffled thud. She saw the pensive set of his profile. ‘Feeling sad?’ she asked softly.
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, like a man not used to being quizzed about his feelings. ‘Sad?’
‘About leaving.’ She noticed that he wasn’t looking into her eyes any more, just staring very hard at her silky black dress, and that a tiny muscle had begun to work in one cheek.
There was a pause. ‘A little. Closing a chapter of your life is always sad.’ He gave a low laugh, and abruptly turned his attention away. But not for long. He looked back into her eyes then, and Clemmie felt drawn