Free The Right Thing by Judy Astley Page A

do you have to be back?’ It was a passion-shattering question to nuzzle into Amanda’s ear but Petroc had to ask, just so he could make an effort to pace himself and stay awake for the long drive back to her home. Getting her back here had been strangely easy and he kept expecting things to ton difficult. He’d spent the evening not believing his luck, since Hayley had got the train back to Redruth and Amanda had said yes to his offer of chips in the Penzance harbourside car park, sharing them with the greedy gulls, all through the couple of hours in the pub spending every last bit of his month’s lunch money on her rum and Cokes.
    It was pitch starless black in the yard at the back of the barn, and Amanda was keyed up and giggling from the last few hundred yards where he’d switched off the headlights and relied on instinct and the protection of the saint of showing-off to get him down the last part of the lane and through the gateway so he could park out of sight of the house. His mum was a great one for inviting people in: ambushing visitors the moment they walked in through the door, encouraging his and Lily’s mates to come and join them downstairs and chat, when all they wanted to do was dash through the hallway, rush up the stairs and hurl themselves into the privacy of their own rooms where they could just hang out and where conversation was not something to fill spaces with. If they went in, his dad would sit Amanda down and ask her about university choices and think he should still give her advice, and his mum would offer her coffee and then look at the length of her skirt as if she was calculating how very few inches long it was.
    â€˜No particular time,’ Amanda whispered. ‘They don’t much care what I do. I expect it’s because I’m adopted,’ she giggled softly, joking about it as only a securely loved child could. Petroc knew he had a half-sister somewhere out there in the world who perhaps also made lightweight, careless comments like that. Occasionally he wondered if she looked like Lily, all skinny and water-coloured, or if she was darker and more solid like him. Amanda’s perfect pouty mouth was breathing warm and damp on Petroc’s neck and he weighed up whether to slide a hand through to her skin now while they were snugly close in the car, or wait till they could get even more comfortable inside the barn. She might cool down on the way in and decide to become all sensible and prim. Or she might not. ‘Though I’ve got to be up early for the milking. My turn, Wednesdays.’ She pulled away a little and smiled, biting her bottom lip. Her face and hair looked ghostly against the black night and the looming building.
    He groped in the side pocket for his trusty Maglite, reached across and pushed her door open. ‘Come on, I’ll just show you round. There’s a brilliant room for parties. I’ve got great plans for this barn next time the parents go away.’ He tried to make it sound as if his mum and dad spent half their lives flitting off on Concorde, leaving him and Lily to organize a social life worthy of London’s best clubs. All he really cared about just now was that the barn, out of season, provided an enviable choice of many empty bedrooms. Amanda was the third girl he’d sneaked in there like this. The other two had been gratifyingly impressed.
    â€˜Are we really allowed in here?’ Amanda clung to Petroc’s hand as they crept in through the barn’s back door and she stumbled on the step in the darkness.
    â€˜Course we are,’ he said, ‘it’s only another part of home. I’m only not putting the lights on because I don’t want the parents to start thinking there’s burglars and come out looking.’
    â€˜Would they mind, if they did and they found us?’ Amanda had a soft Cornish accent, less strident than the local girls who picked Rita’s daffodils, more