Your Nat x

Ben read the letter with mounting disbelief, then ran faster than he’d ever run in his life towards the vieux port. But when he arrived outside Sénéquier, there was an empty space on the waterfront.

Natalia, and her exquisite little boat, had gone.

PART 2

Chapter 11

As Sam arched her back, automatically thrusting her boobs out and pouting at the camera, she was running through the answers she had given in her last exam, in which she’d had to compare Nietzsche to Jung. She was pretty sure she’d done well – she had revised thoroughly and her essays were always insightful and well written.

Things had felt a bit flat since term had ended, though. She loved studying, and life had been looking up considerably since Sienna had taken her under her wing, protecting her from evil Josh and his cronies. The Camden scene was proving to be great fun too. But Sienna was now on holiday in her family’s newly acquired fourteenth-century palazzo in Tuscany, and Sam was one of the only students staying in halls over the summer.

She missed her family like crazy, but staying in halls made more sense than the long, expensive daily commute to and from Essex while she was still working – her agency had set her up with back-to-back jobs for the next couple of months. Also, reading between the lines, her little brother Ryan was being more of a handful than ever, and the last thing her parents needed was another of their children to worry about under their roof.

Still, she went home most weekends, and at least Marky was back now from his work trip to Saint-Tropez, which had seemed to go on forever. As she thought about him, her eyes softened with love and her nipples stiffened still further in the cold air blasting from the wind machine, lifting her improbably pneumatic tits at least another inch.

The balding photographer, who had a faintly repulsive ginger goatee, thought he might just explode in his pants.

‘Oh, God, yeah, Sammi-Jo. Sexeeeeee. Hold it just like that, babe. Oh, yeah. Oh, God, yeah.’

Nikki, the other girl on the shoot, was on all fours. She thrust her bum even higher in the air, hating Sam. In the flesh she looked a lot older than the 21 she claimed to be, with harsh, dyed-black hair framing a hard little face with piggy eyes that she tried in vain to enlarge with smoky black eye shadow and false lashes. The heavy make-up just about worked in photos, but compared to the phenomenally pretty Sam, Nikki was nothing, and she knew it.

Around 6.30 p.m, the shoot was over, and Sam went to get dressed. She stepped into a white denim button-through miniskirt and pulled a red, strappy vest top over her head. It was far tartier than anything she’d wear at college, or even in Camden, but she was meeting Mark for dinner in less than an hour and he liked her looking a bit tarty. Besides, it was 30°C in the shade today and she loved the feeling of the heat on her bare shoulders, arms and legs.