24/03 Ivan might not have been so terrible, but ...

At least they’d had the summer.

It wouldn’t be true to say that it had been entirely blissful – she hadn’t enjoyed feeling so ignorant, so stiff and unsure of what to say, how to behave, and there was always that chorus in the back of her mind, the one that said 'nice girls don’t.'

And it worried her, that she might not be a ‘nice’ girl ... but it had been nice, much nicer than she’d been led to believe.   And he had only been nice when she was ...

And since they didn’t have anything to talk about – oh how she wished she’d been blessed with that social ease which Bea had, she was sure that he’d talk to her then, but ... they had to do something to fill the time while Bea and his friend went for walks, and because they were at the far beach, where no-one else ever went, what they did did seem sort of unreal, not connected to real life.

But when Dad found out – because he’d come into Dad’s shop to speak to her when she was working there – then it had got real, real and horrible and she’d been stopped from going out and they’d looked pitying at her when she said he’d promised to marry her ... and after that, after her Dad said he’d speak to him, Ivan never spoke to her again.

[another travelling of imagination and time ...]