Free V for Violet by Alison Rattle Page B

and straighten my back, then I manage to slide from my seat and put my feet back on solid ground. I’m freezing and my legs are all wobbly. I watch as he climbs from the motorcycle and props it up against the nearby wall. He shakes out his hair and his quiff bounces back into shape. I don’t want to even think about what
my
hair must look like. As he fiddles with his keys and a chain of some sort, I pick at my hair, trying to pull it back down around my face where the wind has frizzled it into stiff little tufts. I wipe my eyes and straighten my glasses. He turns around then and grins at me.
    ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘What are you waiting for? Wanna see something really cool?’
    ‘Yeah … Yeah. All right,’ I say. As he walks off into the shrubby fields in front of us, I hear Mum’s voice in the back of my head.
‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, Violet? You’re in the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger, you stupid girl! You haven’t got the sense you were born with!’
    I ignore her and hurry after him anyway. He’s striding ahead easily and his denim jeans are so tight around his legs that I can see the muscles flexing in the back of his thighs. If I look any further up, I swear my eyes will literally pop out of my head.
God, Violet,
I think.
Get a grip
. I swallow hard.
    ‘Where are we?’ I yell at him. ‘Where are we going?’
    ‘Hampstead Heath!’ he shouts back. ‘Parliament Hill. You ever been here before?’
    ‘No!’ I yell. ‘What’s so special about it?’
    ‘You’ll see. Come on. Keep up!’
    I traipse after him. But it’s harder to go faster than a determined walk because it’s almost completely dark, the ground is lumpy and muddy and there’s a tiny part of me that’s actually a little bit worried. He could be an axe murderer after all. But it’s too late now. I have to stick with him, because I have no idea how the hell to get home, and I don’t want to get lost on my own all the way out here.
    The ground’s getting steeper, and I’m hot now, even though my breath is coming out in little puffs of toy train steam. I unzip my anorak. ‘Is it much further?’ I sound like a whining little girl.
    He stops for a moment and when I catch up with him, he takes my hand. ‘Need a little help, I reckon,’ he says. And just like that, there’s me, Violet White, hand in hand with a gorgeous fella. I wish there was someone here to see it. He pulls me up the hill, higher and higher and higher. His hand is all warm and soft. After what seems like an age, the ground starts to flatten out. We walk out into a huge open space and suddenly it’s much lighter. The sky is like an enormous, glittering blanket wrapped around us.
    ‘Close your eyes,’ he says.
    The hair on the back of my neck prickles. If he is an axe murderer, it’s too late now, so I might as well do as he asks. I flinch as he puts a hand on my shoulder and then I do as he says and close my eyes. But there’s no whoosh as the axe slices through the air towards me and there’s no agonising pain as the sharp blade thuds into my neck. Instead, he just spins me around and around and around.
    ‘There,’ he says eventually. ‘Now, open your eyes.’
    I slowly inch my eyelids open. ‘Wow!’ I breathe, and I steady myself against his arm.
    ‘Told you it was cool,’ he says.
    He’s right. It is cool. Really cool.
    It’s like we’re floating high above the city. It’s all spread out below us. Dark shapes of buildings; office blocks, tower blocks and churches. There’s so many lights; red, white, orange and yellow. They’re flashing, twinkling and blinking at me.
    ‘Look,’ he says, pointing. ‘There’s St Paul’s. And over there, the Houses of Parliament. Can you see?’
    I nod. It’s all so beautiful I don’t want to speak. I think of all the people down there, scurrying around, heading for home. And the late-night office workers still sitting at their desks and policemen walking their beats