Laying the Ghost Read Online Free

a return visit. That was the trouble with girls’-boarding-school life – it was hardly what anyone would term an all-round education, whatever the fancy prospectus claimed. Lacrosse and Latin were all very well, but they completely failed to give you an edge over sexier, worldly-wise day-school girls.
    Nell’s experience of sex to date had been just one fumbled summer with another ex-boarding-school pupil – Marcus from the village – who was equally desperate to get the sex qualifications sorted. Both had been using the few months between A levels and college as a crash-course learning opportunity and had spent many stifling hours in the dark in Marcus’s attic den, nervously getting the hang of each other’s body geography. Their parents were bridge-and-tennis friends and there had been an uncomfortable (but unmentioned – something here to be thankful for) underlying certainty that this was very much an arranged and approved-of coupling, that each set of parents had considered this match suitable enough to get the sexual basics out of the way before the two of them moved on to their next stage of education: Marcus to Bristol (law) and Nell to Oxford (art and design). Nell’s mother Gillian was a practical sort: she made sure her daughter left for Oxford equipped with a full driving licence, a copy of Delia Smith’s
One is Fun
and twelve different-sized sable paintbrushes. It seemed highly likely that Nell’s loss of virginity had also been orchestrated in the interest of getting another practicality achieved before the start of term.
    ‘Criminal, those boots. What a fuckin’ disgusting waste of snakes.’ A girl who smelled of charity-shop mothballs glared across at the beautiful dozing boy.
    ‘Is it?’ Nell immediately challenged. She looked at the girl and saw, in spite of the glare, a potential rival. This girl, all pins, rips, lace and Doc Martens, was taking notice of the lovely boy. She might be finding fault but she’d clocked him – couldn’t take her eyes off him. This was only one step away from a change of mind and serious opposition.
    ‘You know what?’ Nell took a chance, brazenly staking her own claim rather than heading safely for the making-a-friend option. ‘I can’t think of a better use for snakes.’
    And so had begun five years of defending Patrick against many, many a critic.
    Ed was early for once. Today he wouldn’t be sloping late into the college with the most laid-back of the students (the hungover, the oversleepers, the bus-shelter dope-smokers) and having the principal give him that look that said it was bad enough for the college’s image that he dressed like a Kensington Market hippie, circa 1970 – unpunctuality could be the excuse she needed to get him out and smarten the Literature staff up to standards more in keeping with a thriving business. He stashed a heap of marked essays (War poetry – to be dealt with no more than three at a time in order not to feel suicidal), his iPod and a Doors CD to play in the car into his bag, and took a quick glance out of the window at what the weather was doing. The all-enveloping army coat might be needed, or maybe the biker jacket. Next door’s Golf, he noted, was back in the shared driveway. Mimi and Nell were just going into their house.
    ‘Oh good. Next door are home,’ Ed commented to his brother. He backed away from the window; he didn’t want to be thought snooping, not by Nell. He’d see her later, at the Mitchells’ party, and would ask her how the holiday went. He hoped it had been therapeutic – she deserved some fun after putting up with a bastard husband for so long. And he wasn’t nosy, of course not. He was just being neighbourly, and in his opinion there should be plenty more of that. If you insisted on minding your own business and never taking an interest, the whole area would end up anonymous, dead. Of course he knew it was all right for him, he was only around here in south-west London in term-time