'Perhaps you better had.' Helen was equally quick to rise. 'Before I also start to swear!'

'All right, all right.r George quietened them. 'Points taken all round. But we're on holiday, remember? I mean, it's probably my fault, but Yulian's a sore point with me, that's all. And I can't even explain why. But he usually keeps out of the way most of the time we're there, and I can't help it but I hope it's the same this time. For my peace of mind, anyway. He's simply not my type of lad. As for him being how's-your-father - ' (Helen some-how contrived not to snigger) ' - I can't say. But he did get kicked out of that boarding school, and - '

'He did not!' Anne had to have her say. 'Kicked out, indeed! He got his qualifications a year early, left a year before the rest. I mean to say, do qualifications - does being intelligent above the average - certify someone as a raving... homosexual? Heaven forbid! Clever Miss Know-it-all here has a couple of second class "A" levels, which apparently make her near-omniscient; in which case Yulian has to be close to godlike! George, what qualifications do you have?'

'I fail to see what that has to do with it,' he answered. 'The way I hear it, more gays come out of the universities than ever came out of all the secondary moderns put together. And-'

'George?'

'I was an apprentice,' he sighed, 'as you well know. Trade qualifications, I've got them all. And then I was a journeyman - an architect earning money for my boss, until I got into business for myself. And anyway - '

'What academic qualifications?' she was determined.

George drove the car, said nothing, wound down his window a little and breathed warm air. After a while: The same as you, darling.'

'None whatsoever!' Anne was triumphant. 'Why, Yulian's cleverer than all of us put together. On paper, anyway. I say give him time and he'll show us all a thing or two. Oh, I admit he's quiet, comes and goes like a ghost, seems less active and enthusiastic about life than a boy his age should be. But give him a break, for God's sake! Look at his disadvantages. He never knew his father; was brought up by Georgina entirely on her own, and she's never been altogether with it since Ilya died, has lived in that gloomy old mansion of a place for twelve years of his young life. Little wonder he's a bit, well, reticent.'

She seemed to have won the day. They said nothing to dispute her logic, had apparently lost all interest in the argument. Anne searched her mind for a new topic, found nothing, relaxed in her seat.

Reticent. Helen turned her own thoughts over in her head. Yulian, reticent? Did her mother mean backward? Of course not, her argument had been all against that. Shy? Retiring? Yes, that's what she must have meant. Well, and he must seem shy - if one didn't know better. Helen knew better, from that time two years ago. And as for queer - hardly. She would greatly doubt it, anyway. She smiled secretly. Better to let them go on thinking it, though. At least while they thought he was a woofter they wouldn't worry about her being in his company. But no, Yulian wasn't entirely gay. AC, DC, maybe.

Two years ago, yes...

It had taken Helen ages to get him to talk to her. She remembered the circumstances clearly.

It had been a beautiful Saturday, their second day of a ten-day spell; her parents and Aunt Georgina gone off to Salcombe for a day's sea- and sun-bathing; Yulian and Helen were left in charge of the house, he with his Alsatian pup to play with and she to explore the gardens, the great barn, the crumbling old stables and the dark, dense copse. Yulian wasn't into bathing, indeed he hated the sun and sea, and Helen would have preferred anything rather than spend time with her parents.

'Walk with me?' she'd pressed Yulian, finding him alone with the gangling pup in the dim, cool library. He had shook his head.

Pale in the shade of this one room which the sun never seemed to reach, he'd lounged awkwardly on a settee, fondling the pup's floppy ears with one hand and holding a book in the other.

'Why not? You could show me the grounds.'

He had glanced at the pup. 'He gets tired if he walks too far. He's still not quite steady on his legs. And I burn easily in the sun. I really don't much care for the sun. And anyway, I'm reading.'

'You're not much fun to be with,' she had told him, deliberately pouting. And she'd asked, 'Is there still straw in the hayloft over the barn?'

'Hayloft?' Yulian had looked surprised. His long, not unhandsome face had formed a soft oval against the dark velvet of the back of the settee. 'I haven't been up there in years.'

'What are you reading, anyway?' She sat down beside him, reached for the book held loosely in his long-fingered, soft-looking hand. He drew back, kept the book from her.

'Not for little girls,' he said, his expression unchanging.

Frustrated, she tossed her hair, glanced all about the large room. And it was large, that room; partitioned in the middle, just like a public library, with floor to ceiling shelves and book-lined alcoves all round the walls. It smelled of old books, dusty and musty. No, it reeked of them, so that you almost feared to breathe in case your lungs got filled with words and inks and desiccated glue and paper fibres.

There was a shallow cupboard in one corner of the room and its door stood open. Tracks in the threadbare carpet showed where Yulian had dragged a stepladder to a certain section of the shelving. The books on the top shelf were almost hidden in gloom, where old cobwebs were gathering dust. But unlike the neat rows of books in the lower shelves, they were piled haphazardly, lying in a jumble as if recently disturbed.

'Oh?' she stood up. 'I'm a little girl, am I? And what does that make you? We're only a year apart, you know...' She went to the stepladder, started to climb.

Yulian's Adam's apple bobbed. He tossed his book aside, came easily to his feet. 'You leave that top shelf alone,' he said unemotionally, coming to the foot of the ladder.

She ignored him, looked at the titles, read out loud: 'Coates, Human Magnetism, or How to Hypnotise. Huh! Mumbo-jumbo! Lycan ... er, Lycanthropy. Eh? And... The Erotic Beardsleyf She clapped her hands delightedly. 'What, dirty pictures, Yulian?' She took the book from the shelf, opened it. 'Oh!' she said, rather more quietly. The black and white drawing on the page where the book had opened was rather more bestial than erotic.

'Put it down!' Yulian hissed from below.

Helen put down the Beardsley, read off more titles. 'Vampirism - ugh! Sexual Powers of Satyrs and Nymphomaniacs. Sadism and Sexual Aberration. And... Parasitic Creatures? How diverse! And not dusty at all, these old books. Do you read them a lot, Yulian?'

He gave the ladder a shake and insisted, 'Come down from there!' His voice was very low, almost menacing. It was guttural, deeper than she'd heard it before. Almost a man's voice and not a youth's at all. Then she looked down at him.

Yulian stood below her, his face turned up at a sharp angle just below the level of her knees. His eyes were like holes punched in a paper face, with pupils shiny as black marbles. She stared hard at him but their eyes didn't meet, because he wasn't looking at her face.

'Why, I do believe,' she told him then, teasingly, 'that you're quite naughty, really, Yulian! What with these books and everything...' She had worn her short dress because of the heat, and now she was glad.

He looked away, touched his brow, turned aside. 'You... you wanted to see the barn?' His voice was soft again.

'Can we?' She was down the ladder in a flash. 'I love old barns! But your mother said it wasn't safe.'

'I think it's safe enough,' he answered. 'Georgina worries about everything.' He had called his mother Georgina since he was a little boy. She didn't seem to mind.