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better.”
    “So what did she say?”
    “Well… The thing is, it might sound strange. It did to me at first. What she said was that if I didn’t want to be creative, if I really didn’t feel like it, that was perfectly all right. Nothing wrong with it, she said.”
    “That’s what she told you?”
    Tommy nodded, but I was already turning away.
    “That’s just rubbish, Tommy. If you’re going to play stupid games, I can’t be bothered.”
    I was genuinely angry, because I thought he was lying to me, just when I deserved to be taken into his confidence. Spotting a girl I knew a few places back, I went over to her, leaving Tommy standing. I could see he was bewildered and crestfallen, but after the months I’d spent worrying about him, I felt betrayed, and didn’t care how he felt. I chatted with my friend—I think it was Matilda—as cheerfully as possible, and hardly looked his way for the rest of the time we were in the queue.
    But as I was carrying my plate to the tables, Tommy came up behind me and said quickly:
    “Kath, I wasn’t trying to pull your leg, if that’s what you think. It’s what happened. I’ll tell you about it if you give me half a chance.”
    “Don’t talk rubbish, Tommy.”
    “Kath, I’ll tell you about it. I’ll be down at the pond after lunch. If you come down there, I’ll tell you.”
    I gave him a reproachful look and walked off without responding, but already, I suppose, I’d begun to entertain the possibility that he wasn’t, after all, making it up about Miss Lucy. And by the time I sat down with my friends, I was trying to figure out how I could sneak off afterwards down to the pond without getting everyone curious.
     

Never Let Me Go
    Chapter Three
     
    The pond lay to the south of the house. To get there you went out the back entrance, and down the narrow twisting path, pushing past the overgrown bracken that, in the early autumn, would still be blocking your way. Or if there were no guardians around, you could take a short cut through the rhubarb patch. Anyway, once you came out to the pond, you’d find a tranquil atmosphere waiting, with ducks and bulrushes and pond-weed. It wasn’t, though, a good place for a discreet conversation—not nearly as good as the lunch queue. For a start you could be clearly seen from the house. And the way the sound travelled across the water was hard to predict; if people wanted to eavesdrop, it was the easiest thing to walk down the outer path and crouch in the bushes on the other side of the pond. But since it had been me that had cut him off in the lunch queue, I supposed I had to make the best of it. It was well into October by then, but the sun was out that day and I decided I could just about make out I’d gone strolling aimlessly down there and happened to come across Tommy.
    Maybe because I was keen to keep up this impression—though I’d no idea if anyone was actually watching—I didn’t try and sit down when I eventually found him seated on a large flat rock not far from the water’s edge. It must have been a Friday or a weekend, because I remember we had on our own clothes. I don’t remember exactly what Tommy was wearing—probably one of the raggy football shirts he wore even when the weather was chilly—but I definitely had on the maroon track suit top that zipped up the front, which I’d got at a Sale in Senior 1. I walked round him and stood with my back to the water, facing the house, so that I’d see if people started gathering at the windows. Then for a few minutes we talked about nothing in particular, just like the lunch-queue business hadn’t happened. I’m not sure if it was for Tommy’s benefit, or for any onlookers’, but I’d kept my posture looking very provisional, and at one point made a move to carry on with my stroll. I saw a kind of panic cross Tommy’s face then, and I immediately felt sorry to have teased him, even though I hadn’t meant to. So I said, like I’d just