The New Neighbours by Costeloe Diney Page A

upward and grasped the rounded flesh, pushing the lace of the bra downwards and squeezing the emerging breasts between his fingers. For a moment, he stared at the taut nipples, like ripe raspberries, jutting and inviting. He needed now to do more than feel and press—he bent his head to taste… and then, as far as Oliver was concerned, it all went pear-shaped.
    Behind him the door opened and Mike Callow had appeared. Chantal, who had ignored Oliver’s fumblings and graspings in an effort to fight the rising waves of nausea, gave up the fight and was suddenly and violently sick, all over Oliver’s head, all over her exposed tits, all over Peter’s bed, all over Emma and Peter still unaware of anything except the Vindicator stalking the red light district of Chicago.
    Mr Callow had been pretty good about it really. He’d pulled Oliver unceremoniously off the bed, grabbed a towel from the rail and wrapping it round Chantal, had half-carried her into the bathroom, ran a bath and told her to get into it. He went back into the bedroom and switched on the main lights.
    â€œWhat the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at, Oliver Hooper?” he demanded, as Oliver scrabbled with a pillowcase to get some of the vomit from out of his hair and the back of his neck. “Peter,” he bellowed at his own son. “Turn off that bloody video and go into my shower and get cleaned up. Emma, go into the bathroom with Chantal. See she’s OK and get clean yourself. Oliver, go with Peter. You’ll have to lend him a shirt, Peter. Then get back in here and clean this room up. Strip the bed and put all the dirty stuff in the bathroom for now.” He grabbed Oliver by one vomit-covered shoulder. “And if you don’t want your parents to hear about this, you be back here tomorrow morning, eleven o’clock, to get this room properly cleaned. When you’re washed and clean yourself, go home. I want no arguments or explanations tonight.” Mike Callow had been as good as his word. None of the various parents, Hoopers or Havens, heard a whisper of what had happened that night. Angela, in no mood for New Year celebrations, had gone home early. Steve and Annie had been to a different New Year’s Eve party and when they finally awoke on New Year’s Day, they were nursing their own hangovers, and expressed only a passing interest in Oliverand Emma’s evening.
    Oliver admitted to Emma that he had spiked Chantal’s drinks because she had been spiteful to Emma, and Emma, grateful for her elder brother’s championship had agreed that the incident should never be mentioned again. Indeed, she was a little hazy herself as to what had actually happened, as she had been consumed several cans of beer, which would have been forbidden at home.
    The following morning Oliver had arrived at Mike’s at eleven o’clock, and he and Peter had scrubbed the floor and the mattress of Peter’s bed. They had put the sheets and the duvet cover into the washing machine, they had hung the duvet and the pillows out to air. They spent the rest of the morning helping to clear up the party. Of Chantal Haven there was no sign. She had not been summoned to clear up the mess. Emma told him that Chantal had gone home in one of Mike’s shirts over a pair of his jogging pants. Her clothes went home in a plastic bag. “She was going to tell her mother someone spilled beer all over her and put them into the washer herself, so her mum wouldn’t know it was sick and not beer.”
    Since that day, Chantal had given no sign that she even knew Oliver existed. If they did chance to meet, she passed him with her head in the air, ignoring him with a haughty indifference that infuriated him. They didn’t often meet of course, because Oliver didn’t really live in the Circle, but now as he lay on his bed, he wondered what would happen if he bumped into her this time. As there had been no