Free Uptown Girl by Holly Kinsella Page B

and loneliest walk of my life just now, from the house. I felt terrible, thinking how much I might have hurt you. And I thought to myself how wrong I might be. Maybe I can give you what you want because it’s what I want too. I’m also going to explain how frightened I am, that I might get hurt. Or, worse, hurt you. But then I’m going to tell you how funny, smart and lovely I think you are; that I like who I am when I’m with you – and that you make me want to be a better person Emma. And then I’m going to kiss you. Does that all sound okay?”
    Emma’s face beamed brighter than the moon. Her smile bloomed into a lover’s sigh and then laughter as William spoke. Tears of joy glistened in her eyes.
    “It sounds more than okay. But can we do the last bit first?”
    And so William Flynn led Emma Hastings over to the bench and they kissed and talked till long after the sun came up.
    Sometimes love stories do have happy endings.

 
     
    If you enjoyed Uptown Girl by Holly Kinsella, you may be interested in School Ties by Emma Lee-Potter, also published by Endeavour Press.
     
     
    Extract from School Ties by Emma Lee-Potter
     

 

 
     
    ONE
     
    Will Hughes slammed his pen down. It was ten fifteen on a rainy September night and he’d been marking Hamlet essays for more than an hour. And what a bloody shambles they were too. Admittedly he was teaching the bottom set, but he was stunned by the quality of the teenagers’ work. Some could barely string a sentence together, let alone use an apostrophe properly. Only one had produced work that showed any understanding of Shakespeare’s most famous play. 
    Trying hard to stay awake, he took a gulp of cold instant coffee. He was less than halfway through the pile of scripts and at this rate he’d be hard-pressed to finish them by midnight. Worse still, he’d promised to take the first fifteen rugby squad on a training run at dawn.
    For the umpteenth time, Will wondered why he had returned to teaching. He’d left his last school a year ago to join an up-and-coming Shoreditch advertising agency. Yet now he’d had another change of heart and given up his skinny lattes and generous expense account to return to the chalkface.
    Not that Downthorpe Hall was a tough place to work. It wasn’t. Compared to the early years of Will’s career, when he’d been a young English teacher at a tough inner-city comprehensive, Downthorpe was the cushiest number imaginable. A private school dating back two hundred years, it was housed in an elegant Cotswold mansion, complete with castellated turrets, a winding two-mile drive and acres of playing fields. It had once been an all-boys school, but had gone co-ed twenty years ago. The decision was deplored by the old guard but had succeeded in giving the school’s academic results a much-needed shot in the arm.
    Will stretched his arms out wide to keep himself awake, then stopped. He could have sworn he heard a loud whirring noise outside the window. It sounded like a helicopter. But that was impossible. Not at this time of night. And not so close to the school.
    As he forced himself to focus on the next essay, a particularly lacklustre effort covered in coffee stains, the staff room door flew open and Grace Foley strode in. Grace was the deputy head, cool as a cucumber and one of the few members of staff with the nerve to stand up to the governors. Even though it was nearly eleven Grace looked immaculate. Most of the other women teachers chose practicality over style. Grace was the exact opposite. She wouldn’t have been seen dead in a frumpy skirt and cardigan. She always wore heels, had her auburn hair cut in a chic bob every six weeks and had a fondness for designer suits that clung to every curve. Will had spent enough time over the last few months working on fashion accounts to spot a Stella McCartney outfit at twenty paces. He knew there was no way Grace’s clothes came from the high street.
    ‘Did you hear that?’ he