Margot & Me by Juno Dawson

Author:Juno Dawson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781499861853
Publisher: Zaffre
Published: 2016-12-07T15:20:43.072000+00:00

Thursday 27th February, 1941

Oh poor, sweet Bess. I’m so angry my hand is shaking and I can hardly hold the pen. I feel red and hot all over, like a boiling pot of lobsters. Oh, I could spit! Heavens to Betsy, where to start? Everything is such a mess.

As spring arrives in Llanmarion, I have cast off the scarves and gloves and many of my inhibitions. Rick is gregarious, although never coarse, and it’s difficult to be uptight around him. The village seems to have accepted us a pair, which is what makes what happened to Bess even crueller. More on that shortly.

Our courtship has lost its formality. There’s no time for ceremony. There’s a war on. Wartime rules apply. Our time together is now smudged at the edges like a Monet or Van Gogh: springtime yellows and greens, blossoms and buds and, of course, daffodils in abundance.

By his own admission, Rick is not much of a reader, but loves stories. Today we walked through the village, bought iced buns from the bakery and took them down to the pond near the village green, to read. We’ve already ploughed through Jane Eyre so we started Treasure Island. I rested my head in his lap and shaded my eyes with the paperback as he stroked my hair.

‘Look!’ he said. ‘Ducklings!’

‘You are incapable of concentration!’ I derided him with a smile, sitting up to look at the baby ducks. They were, of course, quite adorable.

And that was when it happened. ‘May I kiss you?’ he said, nudging me with his shoulder.

Now the moment was here, I felt as still as the pond in front of us. ‘I think you ought. I was about to send a written invitation.’

Used to my needling, he tilted my chin up with a thumb and pressed his lips to mine. I didn’t dare breathe. I don’t know how I’d imagined it would be, but it was even better than that; so soft, so warm, as intimate as a secret.

For a moment I was completely paralysed. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Just to check, you’d better do that again,’ I said.

He smiled and kissed me again, longer and deeper this time. I knew showing such affection in public was scandalous, but I found I didn’t care one jot. For a moment we were one being. I felt his lips on mine and all my thoughts, all my worries, seeped out of me, soaked up like rain into the grass. Eyes shut, colourful speckles swam through my vision. I don’t know how long we kissed for, minutes or hours, but I’m quite sure I could feel the turn of the earth.

There’s every possibility we’d still be kissing if Bess hadn’t come tearing across the village green like a harpy in full flight. ‘Oh, Margot, there you are! I’ve been looking everywhere.’

I gathered myself and stood as she nearly collapsed in my arms, red-faced and out of puff. ‘Bess, what on earth’s the matter?’

She started to cry, and I could tell by her raw eyes that she’d already cried a bucket.

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