The Romantic Feminist page 25

This is an extract, chosen at random, from what I hope will be my first published novel - are you looking Johnny Geller!?  It's 1972, Lucy and Leo are second cousins aged 15 and 16 - this is the first time they've seen each other for 4 months, since the (for Lucy at least) momentous occasion of their first kiss.  The book is written largely, but not exclusively, from Lucy's point of view.

 “I hope you don’t mind sleeping in the boxroom, like you did last time,” Beata says. 

Last time Lucy stayed they all did things together en famille.  Bike rides around Waterlow Park and trips to see the latest Disney film are not going to be on the agenda now.

“Take Lucy’s bag up Leo.”

He grunts, grips it and says “Come on.”

She follows him up the stairs and he dumps the bag on the floor in the boxroom, a narrow room that looks over the front garden, which is a mass of entangled shrubs, seldom pruned, never controlled.

“How was Africa?”

“Big!”

“Ha-ha!  Oh – you know what I mean...” 

“Sorry – it was amazing.  I took loads of photos.  Do you want to see them?”

In his suspiciously tidy room there are books and collages of photos across the wall showing dusty expanses of bush and the herds of antelope familiar from wildlife documentaries.

“Those are gemsbok – they’re endangered – only a few thousand left.”

“Here – impalas – common as muck.”

 She giggles.

“Here’s one of Mark and me with Aunt Jo.”

She sees them in their hats and shorts.  Why couldn’t I have gone with him?  They are leaning on his table, close and companionable – but not quite close enough to touch. He could touch me, put his arm around me, why doesn’t he?

“This is fantastic,” she says, pointing at a long strip of photos pasted together to form a panoramic landscape.

“Couldn’t get it all in one shot.”

She hasn’t seen this done before and is genuinely impressed; Leo is pleased, because he only got the photos back that morning, and he spent ages lining them up and arranging them to display them to her.

So they while away an hour or so: he tells her about the trip, about the Okavango swamps, about the game parks, about zebra and wildebeest and hippos.  It sounds fantastic, she is envious and wishes she had been asked to go.   The photos are great too.  He obviously knows about photography, as well as drawing and writing and politics and science.  There has been no awkwardness, just the flow of ideas and impressions and opinions, although she is impressed by his talents and cleverness, she doesn’t feel in any way unequal to him.

Then it’s time for tea and chocolate cake and general conversation.