Free Five Go Glamping by Liz Tipping Page A

Kirk.
    ‘Have you seen
An American Werewolf in London
, Fiona?’ said Kirk, very seriously. ‘That’s why they say don’t go out on the moors.’
    ‘Who says don’t go out on the moors?’ said Sinead, looking confused.
    ‘We’re not even on the moors. We are nowhere near any bloody moors.’ said Steph, poking her head over the bonnet.
    ‘Go into the pub, Fiona,’ said Sinead.
    ‘No,’ said Kirk. ‘Don’t go in there, it’s too spooky. I’m going to call the AA.’
    ‘You’ll have to all push me, we’ll get it started again.’
    She climbed back into the car and we all stood around wandering what to do while Kirk came up with theories about horrific things that would happen to us if we dared step foot inside The Creech Inn. I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped out of my skin. I let out a little noise which in turn made Kirk jump.
    ‘Hey sorry,’ the man said. I turned to look at him and saw he was not someone who wanted to murder us at all. He was smiling and had a mop of thick curly hair and really striking green eyes. He was kind of hot but a little too scruffy looking with a threadbare jumper. It was how I imagined Poldark would look if he had fallen on hard times and had been listening to too much Nirvana and couldn’t be arsed to have a shave, but something about him was mesmerising.
    ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Did you need some help?’ he said.
    ‘Hi,’ I said, seemingly suddenly incapable of forming a sentence. Now Kirk was staring at him with his mouth open. The man turned to Kirk, who was still holding his phone ‘You’ll be lucky to get a signal here, mate.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Kirk.
    I don’t know what it was about this man that was making us all lose our marbles. Yes, we could all see he was good looking, but part of me wondered if we had a complete inability to converse with anybody new. Our social lives were so stale, we did the same things all the time, pub on Saturdays, quiz on Mondays, round to mine for dinners in between. I wondered if we had lost the ability to talk to strangers. Something about this seemed all fresh and new to us.
    ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Kirk,’ said Steph. ‘Give me your phone.’
    Steph then adopted her flirty stance, head to the side, hand on hip which most men were unable to resist, but she didn’t seem to be able to hold the man’s gaze and he carried on looking at me.
    ‘Would you…’ started Steph in her best seductive voice ‘… possibly be able to give us a jump?’
    ‘A jump start, she means. Jump start the car.’ said Sinead, looking embarrassed.
    He laughed but still didn’t break eye contact with me and I could feel myself going red as he looked at me with a quizzical, curious look. At the same time I couldn’t look away from him, staring intently at me. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone looked at me like that. Steph coughed and he finally turned to her.
    ‘Sure,’ he said. He walked over to a crumpled heap of a car parked outside the pub and took some leads out. He moved his car nearer to Steph’s, connected the leads and within seconds the car had started and we all got back in. Steph hurried us, worried the car would stop again, so I mouthed a quick thank you.
    I watched him out the back window as he waved us off, and I thought we should definitely go back and thank him at the end of the holiday as we passed through on the way back home.
    *
    ‘And did you see the nice man checking Fiona out, Brian Harvey?’ said Kirk giving Brian a little fuss on the head.
    ‘He wasn’t checking me out,’ I said.
    ‘He so was,’ said Steph.
    ‘Totally was,’ said Sinead and grinned at me. ‘Oh, we’re here! This is it.’ she chirped. We’d only travelled a little while further around a long bend and could see the castle in the distance where the festival was being held.
    ‘I need water.’ murmured Kirk as we all got out of the car again, it looked like one of those late afternoon hangovers was kicking