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JENNY COLGAN
Do You Remember the First Time?
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © Jenny Colgan 2004
Jenny Colgan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780007153855
EBook Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN 9780007388974
Version: 2019-04-17
To Mr B, who
makes me feel
sixteen every time
he walks in the room. (The good way).
Contents
The rain was beating down on the windscreen, as we tried to navigate (rather damply) along the winding country road.
‘I hate the country,’ I said gloomily.
‘Yes, well, you hate everything that isn’t fifteen seconds from an overpriced cappuccino,’ said Oliver crossly, although in his defence he had been driving from London for six hours.
‘I don’t hate everything,’ I said. ‘Only … those things over there.’
‘What things?’
‘Those … oh, you know.’
‘Cows?’
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘You can’t recognise a cow?’
‘Remind me.’ He used to think this was really cute.
‘It’s where your latte comes from,’ he said, sighing.
Oliver does like the country. He was born, bred and boarding-schooled here. He couldn’t understand why someone who’d lived their whole life in London wouldn’t want to get out of it once in a while. I had patiently explained to him several times the necessity of all-night Harts the Grocers, proper bagels, and the choice, if one so wished, to pay six pounds for a bottle of mineral water in a nightclub, but he would bang on about fields and animals as if they were a good thing.
I examined