Leaping up at me.

She has her ballet tutu on! It really suits her. And I notice she is wearing a little satchel on top of it.

Ruby said, “She’s got her playtime snacks in it.”

I said to Matilda, “Have you got your doggie treats in there? Have you got your ickle doggie bickies in there, have you?” She nuzzled me with her snout. Aaaah. I don’t normally like animals nuzzling me, but she is so cute.

Then Ruby said, “Yep, she’s got her snack hoofs.”

“Hoofs?”

Ruby was going off down the path toward Blubberhouse. “Dad gets them from the farm when they slaughter a cow. He has the cow heels and Matilda has the cow hoofs.”

This is not the kind of talk that a creative artiste listens to.

Especially one who has had her face licked by a hoof eater (Matilda).

And an animal in trousers (Cain).

Two face-lickings in as many days.

I was halfway to college in about ten minutes because the wind was behind me. As I passed by the sign that read Woolfe Academy for Boys (at about twenty miles an hour), I couldn’t help thinking about Charlie again.

What was it going to be like when we bumped into each other?

I wish I could say he was a rubbish kisser.

Like bat boy.

But he wasn’t. It was softy and made my legs feel a bit droopy and … it was the best kiss I’ve ever had. Well, in fact, it was the second kiss I’ve ever had. For all I know it might have been a Number 4 on Georgia’s snogging scale, “a kiss lasting over three minutes without a break.” I will never know though, because I didn’t have a watch.

Anyway, I’m not going to ever think about it again. About how he kissed me, and then said this is wrong, I’ve got a girlfriend.

And another thing, has nose-licking even happened to anyone else? There is no mention of it in Jane Eyre, is there? Even when Mr. Rochester is blinded, he doesn’t go for Jane’s nose.

I might have to write to Cousin Georgia, like an agony snogging aunt, and ask her advice about nose-licking.

I still can’t believe he did that.

Cain Hinchcliff.

Perhaps he’s one of Fang’s adopted children. Only he’s half-dog, half–complete moron. Only.

There is a poster on the village hall to say that his band, The Jones, is playing on Saturday night.

Ruby said that she doesn’t think they will play, though, because of the big fight they had when Cain got off with Ruben’s girlfriend. She thinks they have split up again.

They are like wild animals. The whole family, Seth, Ruben, Cain. They are all bad.

Not good.

Not like Alex. He wouldn’t lick someone’s nose.

Or destroy an outdoor lavatory.

He’s not a nose-licking, lavatory-destroying sort of guy.

He is a dreamy sort of guy.

And good.

Then I rounded the corner and there it was, just as I remembered, Dother Hall. The rambling manor house with its turrets and its mullioned windows. Its magnificent Gothic chimneys towering into the wind-tossed sky. Blaise Fox took me up there and told me I could be Heathcliff. She said I had a “special quality” and …