If her mum saw him, she’d understand. She’d get it. But it’s better that she doesn’t know anything, not now, not after all the lectures on staying focused and school getting real as GCSE exams get closer and closer. And she doesn’t mind keeping a secret. It’s kind of cool, actually, to have a proper secret, like a secret room in your house full of secret stuff that no one else knows about. It’s not like she’s actually banned from having a boyfriend, just that her mum and dad have quite specific ideas about boys.

But he’s not like most boys; he’s much more mature. She can talk to him about anything. School, exams, family, brothers and sisters and mates and the real reason they call him B-Boy at school. About how she’s going to be a doctor and how he got talent-spotted by Saracens at the age of eleven and wants to go professional when he’s eighteen and play rugby for England one day. Win trophies.

There was one thing she didn’t talk to him about.

The stupid thing.

It was stupid. On one level, she knew that.

But she still couldn’t stop thinking it: she was going to marry this boy.

Wednesday

WEDNESDAY

Chapter 48

48

Daniel

Mum was right, Daniel thought. It was good to play with the bigger boys.

Jake was tall – nearly as tall as Daniel’s dad, who was more than six feet – and his brother Ethan wasn’t far behind. They seemed like mini-adults to Daniel, huge boy-men as big as teachers or parents. The only other kids on the holiday were his sister Lucy, who wouldn’t be seen dead playing with her brother, and the little girl Odette, who had already told Daniel to his face that she didn’t like boys. She seemed a bit mad.

But Jake and Ethan: they didn’t send him away. And they were cool. Like the cool boys at school, the ones everyone wanted to hang with but everyone was a bit scared of too, the ones who were good at football and funny and wanted to talk to girls.

Daniel wasn’t into football. He liked Minecraft, and Lego Star Wars, and funny videos on YouTube.