She wondered what Charlie would make of the festival; it was his first year here, after all. He’d mostly got used to the more outlandish residents of Willowbury offering him everything from laughter yoga to organic quinoa cakes (not to mention the odd confection that had contained less than legal substances), but he hadn’t yet experienced the heady, unconstrained nature of the festival. Although she knew for a fact he’d been googling like mad and watching a lot of YouTube videos from last year in an attempt to educate himself about it. Thankfully, it wasn’t the kind of event that the local MP was required to officially open; that honour was reserved for Willowbury’s local rock star, Alan Somerville, who’d made the town his home in the prog rock days of the early seventies and fronted several very successful bands, as well as having a stratospheric solo career. Now on the ‘Retirement Tour’ circuit, he’d cleaned up his act a lot from the heady days of the early eighties, but still invited his famous friends to his country mansion for the odd riotous weekend, when his hip wasn’t playing up. Holly’s parents, who, astonishingly, had known Alan in the seventies, had often spoken nostalgically about being invited to Alan’s parties, but it was safe to say that they were all a bit less hedonistic these days.

Stretching her arms above her head, Holly glanced at Arthur, who was curled into a tight orange ball at the foot of her bed. She stepped onto the yoga mat that was permanently placed by the window and performed her morning poses, trying to clear her mind of the million and one things that she had to do before the festival actually started. Annoyingly, she found it easy to clear her mind of all but one thing; thoughts of kissing Charlie under the archway of the Priory kept coming back to her.

As they did, she suddenly felt like that nineteen-year-old geek on the dance floor again, brushing her pale-pink painted lips against Charlie’s as they swayed to the music, pretending she hadn’t felt the stiffness in his trousers as he’d pulled her a little closer. Unnerved by the idea of male desire, having not encountered that much of it up so close, she’d not known how to respond.

She cursed herself; she wasn’t that girl any more; she had time, experience and a lot more of a sense of humour these days. It wasn’t worth obsessing over. The teenage Holly would have done that; the grown-up Holly would just chalk it up to experience.

Dropping to the floor, she pushed up into cobra pose and then moved through into downward-facing dog, trying to push Charlie and his kisses, past and present, out of her mind and focus on her breathing. Inhale… exhale… inhale…