He said, “Well, this is cozy, girls.”

Everyone laughed. And he laughed. He’s got a nice laugh. And he smells nice, not like Connor, who mostly smells of socks and hamster. I think that Charlie washes himself. And also he might wear boy perfume. I couldn’t stand the tension of being so near to him. My knees were tensing. Oh no, not Irish dancing.

Then, thank goodness, just before I started leaping around or neighing or something, Honey said, “Chawlie, I’m going to Hollywood!!!”

Charlie let go of me and said to her, “Wow, Honey, how fab is that, you little star.”

And he gave her a big hug. For slightly too long, I thought. Honey didn’t try to get away either.

Charlie just can’t seem to stop hugging. He is a serial hugger.

And then it got worse. If Charlie had been hugging me, especially in front of everyone, I would have either done my spontaneous Irish dancing or Tourette syndrome of the leg as some people might call it. Or gone unconscious.

But Honey didn’t go unconscious. She went femme fatale. I had seen her do it before on Ben and his head had practically dropped off. She looked down and then she looked up and looked Charlie straight in the eyes. And she was slightly smiling. And fluttering her false eyelashes up and down. Crumbs, she was going the whole hog. She touched her lips with her fingers, kissed them, and then she put her fingers that she had kissed on his lips and said softly, “Oh, Chawlie, I’ll mith you.”

It was like being in a French film. Possibly. I don’t know, I’ve never seen one. But my grandma said the French were “always at it.”

Charlie cleared his throat and leaned down toward her. I thought he was going to snog her! But he kissed her on the cheek and said, “I’ll miss you too, pet.”

I was thinking, “Oh yes, you’ll miss her, if you’ve got time in between all the other girls that you might miss or you’ve got in your pocket or …”

But then he moved away from her and said to all of us, “Look, girls, I would love to stay around hugging with you all day but we’ve got hopping practice. And I actually came to see Jo because I got a phone call from Phil last night.”

We looked at Jo and she went bright red. She looked a bit frightened as well. What next? Charlie went on, “He says can you make it to the public phone in the village, round the corner from The Blind Pig on Saturday at seven?”

Jo stuttered, “Well, I, er … well, I, er …”

As he turned to go off, he looked back at me and said, “Tallulah, we need to talk about stuff.”

And he was gone.

The others looked at me.

Flossie said, “What was that about, Tallulah? What stuff?”

Honey said, “I think he might like you, Tallulah. He ith thooooo gorguth. You should go out with him. I would. Why don’t you?”