register. “You should come down with us sometime.” He tried not to blush as she looked through the corrugated strands of her fringe at him.
“When you next going?” she asked, trying not to sound too eager. Tonight was the last Friday before they started school again and she really didn’t want to spend it trailing up and down the Front.
“Tonight, I reckon,” said Darren, looking over at Julian. “In’t we, Jules?”
“What you say?” Julian put down the magazine Corrine had thrust at him.
“I say we’re gonna go up Swing’s tonight, in’t we?”
Julian nodded his head. “I reckon,” he said.
“What time?” asked Debbie, noting the way Corrine was gazing at Julian and feeling that, for once, things were going to go her way.
“About seven,” Darren said. “D’you want us to meet you somewhere?”
“Well, we get off about six from work,” Debbie spoke quickly, “so we’d have to get changed and walk down from there …” She rapidly calculated how long this might take. “What about we meet you at the bus stop outside the town hall, about ten to seven?”
Darren was nodding, but Corrine had started to frown. “What’s that, Debs?” she asked.
“Tonight,” it suddenly came to Debbie how to play this, “I’m just saying we could go out with these two in town,” she was careful not to say anywhere specific, “after work.”
“Oh,” Corrine’s frown deepened as she tried to process this unfamiliar idea.
But Julian came to the rescue. “I can do you a tape,” he said, “of that Madonna 12-inch. I’ve got it at home. Well, it’s my sister’s really, but she won’t mind.”
“Really?” Corrine’s head snapped round. “You sure?”
“Ten to seven at the bus stop, then,” said Darren.
“You’re on,” said Debbie, light shining in her eyes.
* * *
Once the gaffer had seen Eric arrive, word got around the stallholders fast: the Princess was coming. This meant there would have to be some slight readjustments to the darts that could win you a cuddly toy, the hoops that went over the goldfish bowls and the wooden targets that you shot with a pellet gun. Normally, the odds in all these games were just slightly tilted, so that it was a fortunate punter indeed who could win a prize through skill or strength alone.
But the shelves above the bed she still hadn’t seen were testament to how lucky the Princess had been at securing the trophies of the Leisure Beach.
“Hold you hard,” Ted Smollet nudged his young nephew Dale in the ribs, “here she come.” The fag that perpetually hung from the corner of his lips seemed to tremble, along with the salt-and-pepper eyebrows that grew in clumps above his beady, brown eyes. He grunted and said to himself: “She’s filled out a bit.”
Dale, who had been forced by his mother to work the summer if he wanted a new Norwich City FC season ticket this year, reluctantly followed his gaze. Dale didn’t much like Uncle Ted, a wiry, skinny old man, whose inkily tattooed arms were a testament to a life working the fairgrounds. But he had to admit, working on the Leisure Beach had its compensations. Ten different holidaymakers he’d managed to lure into moonlight trysts in the sand dunes so far this year, none of them all that bad looking neither. Even his best mate, Shane Rowlands, who worked in the holiday camp up North Denes, had not had near that level of success. There was something special in the air here.
Like what was walking towards him now.
Her clothes were more suited to a kid, really, but what they were hiding wasn’t. Shapely calves, tanned like honey, narrow hips and above that, bulges that the loose T-shirt wasn’t doing anything to hide. A blonde head with a sloping fringe that covered half her face, a tilt to her neck, a little air of mystery about her.
Ted dug him in the ribs again. “Put your tongue away, boy,” he said. Then began his customary chant: “Magic darts, let’s play magic darts! Bullseye