Cruel Summer Read Free

grass-ee-ass.
    Katie laughed. ‘It’s pronounced gra-
thee
-ass. You’re not in South America! Apparently, hundreds of years ago, the king of Spain had a lisp so the commoners adopted it
and it stuck that way.’
    ‘Really? Oh, well, points for trying.’ He smiled.
    Katie slid the patio doors all the way open and wandered out onto the terrace. She sank down into one of the dainty wrought-iron chairs. ‘Did you sleep OK?’ she asked. By the time
they’d finally found the villa, they’d been so tired they’d almost collapsed into bed.
    ‘Yeah, not too bad,’ Ryan replied, stirring her tea before hurling the teaspoon into the sink. Joining her at the terrace table, he put her tea down and took a sip of his own
much-too-hot coffee before slipping his shades on. ‘When do the others arrive?’
    ‘Not until about two.’
    ‘OK. This morning I’m all about the pool and reading scripts, then. Did I tell you about the play last night?’
    ‘You might have mentioned it once or twice, yes,’ Katie told him with a grin. Much of the journey from the airport had involved Ryan firing off a year’s worth of improv’
workshops, auditions and at least one salacious encounter with a well-known movie-star-turned-theatre-director.
    ‘This play is
soooo
good though, Katie. Imagine
Inception
but on a much smaller scale and with aliens. I can’t wait.’
    ‘Sounds marvellous,’ Katie said, perhaps too quickly.
    The sun was getting higher in the sky with every minute. Hotter and hotter too. From this part of the world, it was so much easier to think of the sun as something that truly
burned
: a
white ball of flame. Katie stuck to the shade of the terrace – with her milky complexion she’d be crispy baked lobster within minutes.
    ‘How’s it going in Norwich?’ Ryan asked – aware he’d neglected to ask his friend how she’d been getting on this last year. He nipped back inside and grabbed
some Lays crisps from the kitchen counter. At the hypermarket near the airport last night, he’d found it hysterical that Walkers crisps were called ‘Lays’ in Spain and bought
about ten bags. ‘Yes, I’m having Lays for breakfast, shut up.’ He winked. ‘You should get Lays more often, too.’
    Katie laughed. ‘Pervert! Norwich is good. And you know what studying English is like – pretty booky during the week. Then on a Saturday I work in a bookshop. It’s a
book-a-rama.’
    ‘Boring!’ he yelled. ‘I meant have you got a new PLI?’
    ‘A what?’
    ‘A Potential Love Interest! Who’s the “New Ben”?’
    Katie blushed and chewed on a fingernail. ‘There is no “New Ben”.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘I swear. I’ve been too busy. I wanted the full fresher experience, so I joined pretty much every society and club on campus. I actually played lacrosse! Can you believe
it?’
    Ryan smiled – wholesome fun sounded about right for Katie. ‘Not a single drunken traffic-light party?’
    ‘If I
had
gone to a traffic-light party, I’d have been wearing red.’
    ‘With your complexion? Girl, no!’ Ryan laughed. ‘But why not? Isn’t that what being a fresher’s all about?’
    Katie shrugged, hiding behind her tea. ‘Little bit of Ben. Little bit of Janey. I suppose I needed some time.’
    Ryan didn’t push her any further. He knew that, even now, she still wasn’t over Ben. In his TV drama, Ryan figured, this was the point where you inserted a flashback for the benefit
of new or casual viewers. An overview of the story so far . . .
     
    Series One.
Katie and Ben had first met at Longview High. Although Ryan hadn’t actually been present at their first fateful meeting he imagined it had gone
something like this. They would have bumped into each other by a locker (although their school didn’t have lockers) and the plinky-plonky piano backing music would have made it clear that
they were
meant
to be together. They had probably done that thing of being so in-love-at-first-sight that they could only