For the last time, the school bus had dropped her at the top of the lane and she’d swung her bag happily as she strolled homewards. She’d finished with school. The last Baccalauréat exam, the dreaded chemistry, had been taken, she could now forget all about chemical reactions because they would have no relevance in her life ever again. She’d felt free and wonderful, with the summer stretching ahead of her. She was a country girl at heart, had never known anywhere else really. She loved the changing seasons here in Brittany (sometimes all four in a day!), the magical light that had drawn famous artists down the years to paint, the sense of history that pervaded the crop circles and the ancient woods. Of course, she’d loved visiting nearby towns, Pontivy, Carhaix, Quimper for shopping, but the thought of living in such close proximity to other people had made her shudder; she was always glad to get back home. Even if it meant eating her mum’s home-made pizza rather than being able to go to a McDonald’s like her friends who lived in a nearby town.

The thought of a summer of working weekends in the village café, riding Lucky, her pony, helping her dad with the animals and haymaking and then, in the afternoons and evenings, hanging out with her friend, Amelie, made her smile. And this was the summer, too, that Dad was going to prepare her for taking the driving test. He’d bought the car he’d promised to give her, a fun 2CV painted sunshine yellow, months ago, and had sat at her side as she’d driven it around the smallholding, getting used to steering it and changing the gears smoothly. ‘A natural driver,’ he’d called her. ‘Take after me you do.’ By the end of summer, she’d be as free as a bird, driving here, there and everywhere.

Strolling up the lane, she’d thought about Dominique, the local heart-throb. Maybe she’d be casually driving through the village and see him. His eyes would light up as he saw her and he’d jump into the car and she’d drive them to the coast for a picnic. She remembered thinking, yeah, like that was going to happen.

As much as she might daydream and imagine herself and Dominique cast as Sandy and Danny in her favourite film, Grease, Belinda had a streak of realism in her – she knew it was never going to happen. She wasn’t his type – unlike Sandrine, whose parents ran the local bar. So, this summer, the last one before college in Rennes in the autumn to study Accounts and Business Management, she was going to give up having a crush on someone unobtainable (because that’s all it was, right? A crush) and enjoy being free of all the responsibilities everyone assured her would start once she was out in the big bad world.