Girl problems. It was inevitable there would be girls in Don’s life: he was so charming, so good-looking. There would be the sisters of schoolfriends, and girls he would meet in the holidays…
The pounding music was no longer inside Donna’s mind, it was scudding and throbbing through her whole body. Like the scudding and throbbing you felt with a boy when you were in bed with him. There had not been many boys with whom Donna had been to bed but there had been a couple; you could not reach eighteen these days without having explored your sexual prowess. It was necessary to conform, to go with the crowd, to take part in slightly hysterical giggling sessions with girlfriends, relating how far you had gone and whether it had been any good, and whether he had been any good. Sometimes shrieking and saying things like, ‘Oh God, you didn’t do it with him, did you, how utterly gross…’
The trouble was that none of the boys Donna had met matched up to Don. She had sometimes thought she might be a bit cold. But this was not something that could be admitted so she had dutifully yielded her virginity, since not to do so meant being regarded by your contemporaries as a freak, a sad old vestal. Imagine being eighteen and still a virgin, said Donna’s friends pityingly, and Donna had agreed and laughed at the very idea.
But imagine being eighteen, and standing in the kitchen of a battered old cottage, trying to beat down a pulsating lust for your own brother.
Of course Donna was not going to do anything–well–anything wrong with Don. This was the last quarter of the twentieth century, and they were living in a civilized society. It was only in the Dark Ages, in tiny rural backwaters with no means of travelling anywhere or seeing people beyond your own family, that brothers and sisters ended up in bed together. There was a sick old joke, wasn’t there, that incest almost died out when the railways came?
Incest. It was an ugly, sly word. Donna thrust it away, and went to the foot of the stairs to shout up to Don that she would walk down to the village to pick up some food for tonight. She pulled on her trainers, slammed the cottage door, and went out into the warm sunshine before anything could make her change her mind.
But as she walked into Amberwood, and as she looked at the hand-crafted jewellery in the gallery, her mind was full of images of Don. She bought a pair of jade earrings, and picked up some cooked ham and chicken from the nearby delicatessen, together with ingredients for a salad. By midday she was walking back to the cottage. The sun was high overhead; if you looked straight at it, you got sunspots in front of your eyes.
When she reached the cottage she put the food in the fridge, and unlaced her trainers. The sunspots were still dancing across her vision, but the cottage was cool and dim, and the old oak floors were smooth and friendly under her bare feet. She went up the narrow creaking stairs, intending to go into her bedroom to put the earrings away.
Don’s bedroom was on the half-landing, where the stairs turned sharply to the right. Donna hesitated, and put out a hand to touch the door. Was he in there now? Had he heard her come in? She tapped, and called out his name, and heard a movement from within. The sunspots whirled across her eyes again, like showers of gold flecks. She was aware of the scent of the deodorant she had put on that morning diluting the sweat forming under her arms.
After a moment, she pushed open the door and went in.