Free Love and Devotion by Erica James Page B

around while PC Plod, as her father called Steve, banged on about the teenagers of today. She’d tried to signal to Suzie to make her escape with her, but Mum had stepped in. ‘Oh, no you don’t, you stay right where you are. Gemma, go and do your unpacking.’
    Bugger the unpacking, thought Gemma, as she continued to lie on her bed. She was knackered and didn’t have any intention of moving for the next hour. The journey back from Paris, which should only have taken a few hours had been a total nightmare. French baggage-handlers had been on a twenty-four-hour strike. Or had it been traffic controllers? Either way it delayed them getting home by more than six hours. Mum had been all for getting the Eurostar and then the train up to Crewe, but Steve, in one of his I‘ve-paid-for-this-we’ll-bloody-well-stick-it-out moods, wouldn’t listen. She’d left them to their bickering and went off to find something to eat.
    Looking at her watch, she wondered what time supper would be. Maybe she’d pass on it this evening. She could wander into town and get something from the chip shop. In fact, a bag of proper chips swimming in vinegar would be just the job after all that French food. Using the remote control, she turned up the volume on Radiohead’s OK Computer and drowned out the argument still going on downstairs. She closed her eyes, imagining herself back at Glastonbury, where she’d gone earlier in the summer with a bunch of friends when their AS exams were over. She hadn’t really fancied lolloping around in the mud, but seeing as Radiohead were playing, she reckoned she could rough it for a couple of days. It had been the perfect wind-up for Steve. For an ex-policeman, a music festival was the ultimate social evil. The amount of drugs awareness lectures he’d subjected her to was a criminal act in itself. Wake up and smell the coffee, Stevie Boy! She didn’t need to go all the way to Glastonbury to find a supplier. She could do that at school. Or here in Maywood. But the festival had been cool. The sun had shone and the bands had been great. She and Fay had shared their tent with Gus and it had been a right laugh the three of them trying to sleep together. Not that she’d told Mum and Steve about Gus sleeping with her and Fay. That would have brought on a heart attack for them both. It had been a shame that Gemma’s best friend hadn’t been able to join them, but Yasmin came from a strict Muslim family and Mr and Mrs Patel were very protective of their only daughter.
    She closed her eyes and lost herself in the music. It was good to be home. The last two weeks had been exhausting. As part of the student exchange system the school ran, she’d been staying with the Leon family in Paris. In theory, Veronique Leon would be coming to stay with them next summer, but Gemma wasn’t so sure she’d actually come. Veronique had been an all-round loser and way too serious. She hardly ever wanted to go out and only wanted Gemma there to improve her English. Okay, so that was the point of the exercise, but how school had reached the conclusion that they’d have anything in common was a mystery to Gemma. It hadn’t been all bad: Veronique’s nineteen-year-old brother, Marcel, had more than made up for any inadequacy on his sister’s behalf. Home from university, and with his own transport - a noisy, back-firing motorbike - Marcel had offered to take her out. They’d gone to the cinemas, they’d sat around in smoky bars and cafés and one night they’d gone to a party and didn’t come home until seven in the morning, having spent the last two hours lying on the dewy grass in the nearby park, watching the sun come up. Mum and Steve would have gone mad if they’d known.
    But not half as mad as if they knew what else she’d been doing. Marcel had made it pretty obvious that he wanted to go to bed with her, and deciding that she quite fancied him, and that she might just as well get the whole virginity thing over and