CHAPTER TWO -THE REAL SIMONE

Introducing the main characters, David and Paula with Simone.

“What's got into her?” asked David as he and Simone splashed along the street, going back the way they'd come. The rain might have stopped as suddenly as it had started, but the world was still very wet. Simone was dressed for tennis, her white skirt enticingly short, and he wore shorts, equally white but longer.

“Maybe us holding hands?” sighed Simone. “It could be she didn't like that very much. After all, I've lost count of the number of times she's said she fancies you when us girls are having a private chin-wag!”

“She never has!”

“And some … quite personal things, too,” grinned Simone. “She's smitten, all right. It's embarrassing, really.”

“So if you're such close friends and you know the way she feels, why did you grab hold of my hand and keep hold it like you did?” asked David, shocked. “I thought it odd at the time, as if you might be nervous or something, maybe her dad's an ogre or something like that.”

“She said she was getting a car,” murmured Simone, pausing. “That her dad's getting her one for her birthday. It'd be useful, that. A car to take the two of us … three of us … places. I'm fed up with buses and walking! I'm too old for it.”

“She might not want to take me anywhere, not now that she's seen us holding hands,” pointed out David. “Nor you, I shouldn't wonder. After all, it was you holding my hand and if she thinks anything of me, not that I believe she does, she might hate you for it!”

“Not Paula,” smiled Simone. “She's a p***y cat! Not the sort of girl to hold a grudge. I remember when I nicked her homework a couple of years back and copied it out in my own handwriting before handing it in and she got the blame for plagiarising me while I got an 'A' for my brilliance … she's a p***y cat all right!”

“You did that? To a friend?”

“Why not? All's fair in love and course work, don't you think?”

David stared at her “Is that what you are?” he asked, “a cheat and a fraud?”

“Now don't be all prissy! You'd have done it if you'd needed to.”

“No I wouldn't then!” declared David hotly. “And anyway, why would you need to rip your best friend off like that? It's not what friends do.”

“Oh, Mr Nice as Pie, are you?” she sneered. “Get into the real world, Dave. Why do you think she goes down the recreation ground dressed in the shortest tennis dress on the planet, like a w***e? Not because she's good at tennis, that's for sure! No, it's so that she can parade her big bottom and bigger b***s in front of all the lads and get a quick lay before her birthday!”

“She's said that?”

“She doesn't have to,” smirked Simone, “It's in her eyes.”

“That's not very nice.”

“So how about you and me beating her to it, Dave? I know a place, the hut down the recreation ground. Nobody goes there on Sundays and it's never locked! We could beat her to her quick lay and still be home in time for lunch!”

“You really mean that, Simone?”

“Why not? It's fun, you know. I've done it more than once, so I'm no virgin, and with looks like yours I'll bet you're not too!”

“What do you mean, looks like mine?”

“I've seen the way you look at us girls when we're on the tennis court! I've almost blushed when I've noticed your " er - excitement! You know, when you're wearing those thin tennis shorts...”

“Waiting for my turn on the court!”

“Whatever. But you do get … interested, don't you, Dave. You know what I mean … I shouldn't have to spell it out, not at our age, we're just about adult, you know, and it's perfectly legal.”

He took a step back. “I can't believe I'm hearing this,” he muttered.

“You mean you can't believe your good luck, having it offered to you on a plate on a damp Sunday morning?”

He shook his head. “I thought you were okay,” he muttered. “I thought you and Paula were two decent girls who enjoyed a few strokes of her racquet on Sunday mornings.”

“There's no fun in decent,” she grinned. “Well, are you coming or aren't you? I can always find someone else with trousers if you're not up to it?”

“It's not that I'm not up to it,” he almost snarled, “I'm up to it all right! The one trouble is, I'm not up for it, not with a slapper like you and not in a sleazy hut with a leaking roof!”

“I'm no slapper!” she almost shouted.

“Really?” he said quietly, “well, if you go back over all you've said since we left Paula's front door there's only one word for you and that's slapper. A self-confessed cheat and fraud as well as a nymphomaniac who's not bothered who she goes with, or where, or even what diseases she attracts to her well-worn p***y? That's being a slapper in any language I've heard of.”

“Are you gay, Dave?” she asked, slyly. “Is it lads you fancy? Is that why you hang around on a Sunday mornings dressed in white shorts and with a load of other lads at the recreation ground?”

“You're a rather nasty person, aren't you, Simone? If it matters to you, I'm not gay and neither are any of my tennis mates. Now excuse me. I need better company!”

He turned and walked quickly off, back in the direction the two of them had come from, towards Paula's front door. Simone stared after him, and sneered. “Loser,” she called, quietly so he wouldn't hear.

The b***h, he muttered to himself, the unprintable lousy no-good b***h! I'd do well if I never heard her name again, never saw her on the street, never watched her on the court... I can't believe what a b***h she is!

He was so busy sending Simone, mentally, to every kind of hell he'd heard of, that he didn't notice anyone else on the street, so it came as a surprise when a man's voice said “Is that young David with his head in the clouds?”

He turned, and his heart leapt when he saw Paula with her father, she no longer in her tennis gear but wearing a much more modest denim skirt and blouse.

“Please don't get her a car...” was all he could say.