Scandalous (2 page)

“Would you like a condom?” Sasha offered helpfully. “I’ve got one.”

“A bit late for that, I’m afraid.” Will grinned. “Sorry darling. You’re so sexy I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Erm, no. Not really.”

Wow. So that was sex. It was quite a lot shorter than I expected. But that’s probably only because Will’s so good at it, it doesn’t take him as long as other people.

“Shall we go back down and join the party?” Will was already pulling on his jeans. “Of course I’d much rather be here, making love to you.” He kissed Sasha on the forehead. “But I feel a bit rude. You know, being the host and everything. Jago’s probably pocketing the silverware as I speak.”

Will’s parents were on holiday in Spain. With a faith in their eldest son that owed more to love than judgment, they had left Will in charge of Chittenden, their beautiful sixteenth-century farmhouse in the Sussex Weald. Tonight’s party was his third in as many days.

“Oh, gosh, totally. Of course. You should go down.” Sasha scoured the floor for her underwear. “I have to get home anyway.”

“You’re not staying over?” Will looked genuinely crestfallen. Sasha sighed.
He’s so lovely.

“I can’t. It’s my dad’s birthday, remember? I promised him I’d be home for supper. Mum and I always watch him unwrap his presents.”

“Hmmm. Well, I suppose that’s fair enough. After all, I’ve already unwrapped
my
present.” Will pulled Sasha to her feet and kissed her on the lips. She felt ready to burst with happiness.

Will Temple loves me.

Will Temple has
made love
to me.

I am a woman at last!

Chittenden was in the village of Tidebrook, about a ten-minute drive from Sasha’s parents’ cottage in Frant. It was just past seven o’clock, and the last rays of summer sun were still sinking into the woody Sussex horizon.
I love it here
, thought Sasha, driving through the familiar countryside.
I’ll miss it when I go away to Exeter.

In a few weeks Sasha would have her A-level results. Not that there was ever much doubt what her grades would be. Sasha Miller had been a straight-A student since she started school at four years old. By that age she could already read fluently and knew considerably more about the solar system than her primary school teacher, Miss Rush.

“I hesitate to use the word
obsession
,” Miss Rush told Sasha’s father at her first parent-teacher meeting, “but Sasha is inordinately interested in space. I’m wondering if you could try to introduce some other interests? Just to create a balance.”

“Such as what?” Don Miller, Sasha’s father, was a keen amateur astronomer himself. He shared his daughter’s delight in the unknown world of stars and planets, and wasn’t sure he liked the gist of Miss Rush’s remark.

“A lot of the little girls are keen on princesses.”

“Princesses?”

“Yes. Princesses. Mermaids. Even the dreaded Barbie!” Miss Rush let out a tinkling little laugh. Don Miller shot her a withering stare.

“It might help her make friends, Mr. Miller. Sasha…how shall I put this? She doesn’t quite fit in.”

Sasha never did learn how to fit in. Princesses, mermaids, and Barbies passed her by in much the same way that in later years drugs, nightclubs, and celebrity culture remained a deliberately closed book. Thankfully as she grew older, her teachers became more encouraging of Sasha’s “obsession” with astronomy and her emerging genius at physics.

“Your daughter is a uniquely gifted scientist, Mr. and Mrs. Miller.” Mrs. Banks, the headmistress of St. Agnes’s, stated the obvious. “We have high hopes for her at university.” Don and Susan Miller had strained every financial sinew to afford their daughter’s private-school fees. They had high hopes too.

“What about Oxbridge?”

“Well.” Mrs. Banks shifted uncomfortably in her high-backed wooden chair. “That’s certainly a possibility. Of course, Oxford and Cambridge both require interviews.”

Nobody doubted Sasha’s intellectual ability. It was her social skills that had always been the problem. Speaking in public was her worst nightmare. But even speaking in private could be a challenge if the subject didn’t interest her. These days, Cambridge colleges were looking for more than straight-A grades. They wanted “rounded” students. Pretty, confident girls who could hold their own at an interview. Sasha was fine once you got her onto particle physics or the latest debates raging in game theory. But she had no facility for small talk. As for the dreaded space left for applicants to include “Hobbies and Other Interests,” Sasha could only stare at it in bafflement.
Why would somebody need to have another interest, when their specialist subject was the entire universe?

Sasha applied to the four redbrick universities with the best reputations in her subject. None of them required interviews. All four offered her a place. She decided that if Cambridge rejected her, she would go to Exeter, and she did her best to look forward to the prospect. But deep down she knew that the Cambridge physics faculty was the best in the world. She desperately longed to get in.

The staff at St. Agnes’s suggested she go to an interview coach to address her weaknesses as a candidate. “Even something as simple as wearing the right clothes can be crucially important.” But Don Miller was having none of it.

“Ridiculous. It’s a travesty. Sash wants to be a scientist, not a television presenter. It’s blatant sexism.”

He was right. It
was
blatant sexism.

Unfortunately, the school was right too. Sasha’s interview at St. Michael’s College Cambridge was an unmitigated disaster.

On the drive back to Sussex, Sasha glumly ran through a postmortem for her dad.

“They asked me about politics. What I thought about the latest G8 summit and whether I had strong views on globalization.”

“Why?”

“I’ve no idea, Dad.”

“Well, what did you say, love?”

“I said no.”

Fair enough. Bloody silly question anyway.

“What else did they ask?”

“The tutor for admissions asked me what I thought I would bring to St. Michael’s.”

Don Miller brightened. “And what did you say to that?”

“Books.”

“Ah.”

Oh well. Exeter’s a fine university. I’m sure she’ll be happy there.

The Millers’ cottage was a tiny, disordered, tile-hung gem overlooking Frant village green. All Sasha’s classmates from St. Agnes’s lived in far grander houses—houses like Will’s—but Sasha would not have traded her childhood home for Buckingham Palace. She loved everything about it: the hanging flower baskets dripping jasmine on either side of the front door; the minuscule leaded windows that let in almost no light but that gave the house the look of Hansel and Gretel’s cottage; the long, sloping back garden, a tangled mishmash of weeds and wildflowers, with the shed at the bottom housing Sasha’s precious telescope, her most treasured possession.

By the time Sasha parked her dilapidated red VW beside the green, it was twilight. The church’s ancient Saxon steeple jutted proudly over the village rooftops, a benevolent giant bathed in the blue light of evening. As Sasha got out of the car, a single note of the church bell marked the half hour. Summer smells of warm earth, freshly mown grass, and honeysuckle hung heavy in the air. Sasha breathed them in, dizzy with happiness.
Will loves me.

Before tonight, she’d been nervous about leaving him in September. Will had gone straight from school into his father’s estate agency business—
I never fancied uni, Sash. I’m not the type
. The idea of leaving him in Sussex, prey to all the St. Agnes’s girls in the year below, filled Sasha with horror. Especially as Exeter was so terribly far away. But now that they were sleeping together—
Good-bye virginity! I won’t miss you
—she felt blissfully secure in the relationship. She would read books on the subject and become a fabulous, inventive lover. Will, consumed with desire, would hurtle down the A303 every weekend, desperate to be with her. Afterward they would lie awake at night, staring at the stars, talking about…hmmm, the fantasy got a little vague at that point. But anyway, it would all be wonderful and perfect and…

“Sasha! Where have you been? We’ve been trying your mobile all day. Dad was about to call the hospitals.”

Sue Miller, Sasha’s mother, was a plumper, shorter version of her daughter. Her once-black hair was now heavily laced with gray, but her pale skin was still smooth. More worldly and sensible than Sasha (not that that was hard; the family poodle, Bijoux, had more common sense than Sasha), Sue had no idea how she and Don had produced such an intellectual powerhouse of a child. Don reckoned it was his genes. But then Don was out of his mind.

“Sorry. I must have switched it off. Or something…” Sasha rummaged absentmindedly in her handbag. Where
was
that phone? “Is it birthday suppertime? I’m starving.”

“Not yet.” Don Miller appeared in the hallway. He was holding a large envelope. “This arrived for you in the afternoon post, Sasha. I think you should open it now. Get it out of the way.”

Despite herself, Sasha’s heart lurched when she saw the Cambridge postmark.

“St. Michael’s.”

She already knew she hadn’t got in. But the weight of the envelope confirmed it. Everyone knew that if you were accepted, they sent you a fat package full of pamphlets about grants and accommodation and reading lists. This, quite clearly, was a single sheet of paper.

Sasha wandered through into the kitchen. Don started to follow her, but Sue held him back.

“Leave it, love. Give her a minute. She doesn’t need an audience.”

In the kitchen, Sasha stood with her back to the stove, turning the envelope over in her hands. Sensing her anxiety, Bijoux heaved his fat form out of the dog basket and sat loyally at her feet.

“Thanks, boy.”
Why did the stupid rejection have to arrive today?
She wanted to remember this as the day Will Temple made her a woman. Not the day that St. Michael’s Stupid College rejected her because she didn’t know about globalization and her cardigan was buttoned up wrong.

Wrapping her anger around her like a cloak, Sasha tore open the letter.

On the other side of Frant village green, the Carmichael family was enjoying a summer barbecue with friends when they heard the scream.

“What was that?” Katie Carmichael put down her beer and moved toward the garden gate.

“Nothing.” Her dad, Bob, turned over the last batch of pork sausages. “Just some kids playing silly buggers. Any chance of another jug of Pimm’s out here, Kelly? It’s thirsty work you know, slaving over hot coals.”

But Bob Carmichael’s wife wasn’t listening. She was standing at an upstairs window, staring openmouthed at the spectacle unfolding before her.

“Oh my God!” Katie Carmichael had reached the gate. “It’s Mr. Miller. He’s got no clothes on.”

“You what? Don Miller?”

Bob Carmichael dropped his tongs. Half the village was outside now, pouring onto the green. Some of them were taking photographs. Most of them were laughing, or screaming, or both. Everyone knew Don Miller. He’d run the local post office for the last fifteen years, not to mention heading the Frant Neighborhood Watch Committee.