Page 58 of Love Letters on Hazel Lane

‘Hi, I’m Ras,’ he said.

‘Hi, I’m Jo.’

‘We should choose our letters. Seven each, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, seven.’

He was far better at this than she was, Jo thought. Why hadn’t he been this confident at the start of their real date?

‘Would you like to go first?’ he said.

‘Shouldn’t we take a letter from the bag and the one nearest the start of the alphabet goes first?’

‘You’d come across a bit nerdy if you said that on an actual Scrabble speed-date.’

She glanced at the timer. A minute had already passed and they hadn’t laid a single word down yet. Her letters weren’t all that easy either. ‘Q’ with no ‘U’. Only one vowel, in fact.

She played FELT in the end and added up her points, jotting them down on a fresh sheet in her Filofax, with the time ‘1 min 32 secs’ next to it.

‘Great word,’ said Ras.

‘It isn’t. You’re being weird.’

‘I’m being a nice date. Hoping you’ll put a little tick in my box and agree to go out with me.’

He was play-acting, she reminded herself. And she had given up on men.

She drew four new letter tiles.

In a mere thirty-two seconds, Ras spelled out FANCY on a double word score for 26 points.

She could now spell out YES using the Y of FANCY. Yes, I would tick your box. Yes, I would agree to go out with you.

As she placed the ‘S’ on the board, Ras stretched his hand out and placed it over hers, displacing several of the tiles on the board and pretty much ruining the game. His skin felt soft and warm. But not clammy. Definitely not clammy. She looked up into his eyes.

He coughed. ‘I’m testing what would happen, if someone got a little amorous and decided to hold hands with their date across the board.’

Jo’s heart sank. He moved his hand away from hers and gestured at the jumble of letters.

‘And there you have it. The game is spoiled. We’ll have to make a rule: no hand-holding till the boards have been packed away. I mean, it could be disastrous. A tile could get knocked on the floor and never be seen again. Would you like to play another round?’

They tested the Scrabble speed-dating idea several times that evening. And the evening after that. And the one after that too.

Jo was pleased that she won the majority of their ten-word matches, but disappointed that he didn’t take her hand again. Not once.

23

As Ras had predicted, Mr Morgan was less than enamoured with the speed-dating idea.

‘I’m not sure that’s appropriate,’ he said. ‘This is a primary school.’

‘It’s a bit of fun, Nick,’ said Sal. ‘Not an orgy.’

‘Keep your voice down. There might be children about.’ He stood up and closed his office door.

Jo had taken two hours off that morning so she could pop into the school and outline her latest plan to Sal and the head teacher. But so far, he didn’t seem too keen.

‘It’ll be very respectable,’ said Jo.