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in big trouble.’
    In return for keeping Olive busy, Spencer promises Rachel a timed game of Ironman triathlon. Later, when he and Hazel get back.
    Now, Hazel steps over a tuft of sandy grass. She is wearing her swimming costume and her tennis skirt and no shoes. She’s thinking it’s no crime to leave Olive behind because I love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you. Love you for ever. A long flat cloud rolls across the sun, and the seagulls are suddenly closer, clearer, each movement of a wing like a rearrangement in a shrugging shoulder. Their yellow eyes see everything that moves but remember nothing, not Hazel and Spencer at the top of a dune, the way they stop, stand still, glance nervously at each other’s fingertips.
    They hear someone coming. They turn and shade their eyes and it’s an older boy with walking boots and a rucksack. He wants to know where the coastal path is, but not the one which goes up to the cliffs. He says the cliffs are dangerous at this time of year. He wants the low-level path which follows the shore, and Hazel tells him they don’t know.
    â€˜We’re on holiday,’ she says.
    The older boy walks away with the big rucksack bouncing on his back and Spencer and Hazel lie down out of the wind, head to toe, looking up at the sky and the evenly-wheeling seagulls. In a blue gap between two white clouds, a bright interval, a tiny silver aeroplane pipes out a neat pair of vapour-trails.
    Hazel moves her wrist so that the ends of her fingers touch the back of Spencer’s hand, and this now, both of them think, this now is truly phenomenal, this is really happening right now and in real life, me and a girl, me and a boy, and this will last for ever. I shall never forget you. I shall love you always. This is love, and it’s wonderful and frightening because there must be a right and a wrong way to move on from here. But in the meantime there is only me and a girl, me and a boy, and the slow progress of a jet plane to capture as it angles steadily across the pale blue sky.
    â€˜Aer Lingus,’ Hazel says.
    'Iberia.’
    â€˜British Airways.’
    â€˜SAS.’
    â€˜Lufthansa.’
    There is a pause as the plane slips behind cloud, heading for the sun.
    â€˜You know your airlines,’ Spencer says.
    Hazel pinches his shoulder, but squeezes only softly. When he lifts his arm to protect himself she punches him in the side. He grabs her and they roll each other over, once, twice, until they end up side by side and breathless, absolutely equal no winners.
    They break apart and sit up quickly, as if someone was coming. Hazel inspects a fingernail and some sand stuck behind it.
    â€˜I’ve got a scholarship to a new school,’ she says. ‘At lunch you always have to sit in the same seat.’
    'I hate school,’ Spencer says.
    'If you were at my school you could sit next to me.’
    And then when Spencer doesn’t say anything Hazel says:
    â€˜You can kiss me if you like.’
    It is the first of November 1993 and Hazel says:
    â€˜You can kiss me if you like,’and Spencer thinks someone might be watching. He doesn’t want to smile but he smiles and with his little finger he draws a stick-man kicking a football in the sand.
    â€˜You can’t kiss until you’re married,’ he says. He doesn’t look up, not even when Hazel asks him when was the last time he watched a video?
Everyone
kisses before they’re married. She starts rummaging through her bag, saying they should make a pact, and Spencer likes the idea even though he’d never have thought of it himself.
    â€˜Now?’
    â€˜Right now,’ Hazel says. ‘Before we kiss. Why not?’
    She pushes right to the bottom of the bag and pulls out the woollen red-and-white gloves. She puts one of them on, the right hand one. She tells Spencer to put on the other one and then they hold hands, glove to glove, right hand to left