Free Always I'Ll Remember by Rita Bradshaw Page A

evening.
     
    It was a wonderful evening. From the first moment they walked into the extravagant foyer, Abby was in awe of her surroundings, even before James purchased tickets for the royal circle at two whole shillings each. A large box of chocolates tied with an enormous pink bow followed, and when they were shown to their seats she felt like pinching herself to make sure it wasn’t all a fantastic dream.
     
    The cinema’s band, the Eagles, played before the programme commenced, and again between the main film, the newsreel, the magician doing his tricks and the short cartoon, and in the interval the Regal’s mighty Compton organ came up and the organist entertained everyone while they ate their ice creams. By the time they re-emerged into the warm darkness of the late July evening, Abby knew James must have guessed she hadn’t been to the Regal before, but by then it didn’t matter.
     
    ‘I don’t want the evening to end.’ In the car, James turned to her, his blue eyes glittering in the shadows.
     
    Neither did Abby. She had noticed more than one pair of female eyes turn in his direction for a second look, and although she’d felt proud he had chosen to be with her above any other lass, she’d been surprised at how jealous she’d felt too.
     
    ‘Do you fancy coming dancing on Saturday at the Empire? Lew Stone was there a few weeks ago and I think Billy Cotton’s on for Saturday. Anyway, it’ll be a good band at the Empire whoever it is, it always is.’ Added to which he’d get to hold her as close as he wanted, for some of the evening at least.
     
    She didn’t have a dance dress or shoes but she had Saturday to find what she needed. Abby nodded. ‘Yes, please.’
     
    ‘Great.’ He smiled at her. ‘My pals are going to be pea-green with envy that I’ve got the most beautiful girl in the world on my arm.’
     
    She giggled, and then, as his face came nearer, she knew he was going to kiss her and she became very still. His mouth was warm and firm, the kiss was everything she’d dreamed her first kiss from a lad would be and now he was so close she could smell a faint spicy perfume coming from his skin and it was intoxicating.
     
    As for James, he couldn’t believe what the feel of her lips, even tightly closed as they were, was doing to him. He had sown quite a few wild oats during his university years; the sudden freedom from the tight restrictions of being an only child and the apple of his mother’s eye, not to mention the willingness of some of the liberated young ladies with whom he had associated, had gone to his head. But not even with Mary, his first lover who had taken great delight in initiating him into the pleasures of the flesh - she was studying to be a doctor and needed to be conversant with the male anatomy, she’d teased - had he felt like this. But then he hadn’t loved Mary, nor she him for that matter, and therein lay the difference. He might have known her only a few weeks but Abby had taken over his mind and his heart.
     
    ‘I’d better get you home.’ Reluctantly he forced himself to draw away and start the engine, his body as hard as a rock beneath the wide trousers he was wearing. Glancing at the box of chocolates Abby was clutching, he added, ‘What are you going to do with that? Your mother will guess you’ve seen a lad if you walk in with it.’
     
    Abby looked down at the box. It was beautiful, a picture on the lid of a thatched cottage with roses round the door, and it still contained half the chocolates even though she and James had eaten loads. She would keep this box for ever and ever as a reminder of this magical night. ‘I don’t care.’ And suddenly she didn’t. ‘I’m nearly eighteen, for goodness sake, it’s not as if I’ve just left school or something. I shall tell her about you if she says anything.’
     
    ‘You will?’ He suddenly felt ten feet tall. If she was going to brave her mother’s wrath, it had to mean she was serious