When Abigail's Aunt Harriet told her she could bring along a friend with her to stay for Easter, she didn't stipulate until later it had to be a girl. But what was going on in the little village, cut-off from the rest of the world? This is a story set partly at Seacombe Independent Girls' High School, commonly known as SIGHS and involves young people involved in such things as humour, adventure, crossdressing and growing-up.

Part Three: In which I become a Mata Hari!

Author's Note: This story is complete and will be published in four parts at approximately daily intervals.

In the end, I decided it would be better to go with him than be left behind on the steam launch, not knowing what troubles he was getting himself into. He was right that we could steam right up to the dock wall and tie up the launch to a ladder. The first problem was trying to climb the ladder wearing a long dress over a crinoline! In the end, we decided we'd remove our dresses and crinolines and explore wearing just our corsets, woollen stockings and shoes.

Of course, it left a wide expanse of thigh revealed, as well as our shoulders and the top of our breasts. Stevie, with his Torsolet covering his upper half was fine, but I had goose bumps all over my breasts and arms. If Jethro was still around the dock, he'd probably explode with erotic passion at the sight of us.

So Stevie climbed up the ladder to the dock, cautiously sticking his head over and looking carefully around. Then he motioned me to follow and climbed over the top.

By the time I was standing on the dockside, he was already several yards away, staring at the lock gates which sealed off the dock from the river.

"I was right," he said. "There are two lock gates."

I nodded, and if I looked as though I couldn't care less, that's because I couldn't. "Are you certain there's no one around," I asked.

He gesticulated around the dock. There were a couple of large single-story buildings, with locked padlocks clearly visible on the outside, but those aside there was nowhere where anyone could possibly be, except...

"What about on the fishing boat?" I asked. "There could be someone on board that."

Stevie sniffed, then went walking along the dock until he reached the fishing boat. There was a ladder leading down from the dockside to the deck of the boat, and he climbed down it. He looked incredibly erotic in just his corset and stockings, and I wondered just what would happen if Jethro suddenly appeared.

But he did not. Stevie poked his head inside the wheelhouse and then looked down a hatch.

"You'd better come down and see this," he called.

"You want me to come down there!" He might as well have been inviting me into hell.

"Come on. You are a wimp."

Personally, I thought being a wimp was quite sensible – the kind of person who survives when others are leaping into danger. All the same, my curiosity was piqued and I carefully climbed down the ladder to the deck. It was only there that the smell hit me. There was no doubt this was a fishing boat; no doubt at all.

"First of all," Stevie sad, "look down this hatch."

He pointed to the one in the foredeck and I stepped over and looked down. It's only now I was on the boat that I realised how small it was. Two paces and I was standing looking down into a small storage space, and from the smell there was no doubt what this was used for.

"What about it?" I asked.

"Imagine you were smuggling cases of whisky," Stevie said. "How many do you think you could pack down there?"

It wasn't so much the overall size that was the problem as the low height and the funny shape. Right below the hatch, you could probably put one box on top of another; then perhaps one or two on either side.

"Five? Six?" I guessed. "It's a lot smaller than I imagined. And the weird shape means you can't stack them."

"Precisely," Stevie agreed. "Now come and look in the wheelhouse and see how many cases you'd get in there."

It was tiny. OK, there was space for the helmsman and perhaps one other to sit on a narrow shelf, squashed together for warmth, but no way could you store much else.

"If there was only one person in here," I suggested, "you could stack boxes to the ceiling."

"But not if you want to conceal them," Stevie said. "If the coastguard shone a spotlight on you, it'd be obvious you had boxes stuffed in here.

"OK," he continued, "there are probably several more lockers where you can store the odd box or two, but if it's alcohol he's smuggling, then it's no great deal. Right?"

"Whereas," I said, "if it's heroin, you could get tens of thousands of pounds worth of plastic bags down that hatch."

"Precisely. So we're agreed he's a drug smuggler."

"Hang on," I said. "We don't have any evidence he's any kind of smuggler at all. And this boat is so small; could it really cross the English Channel, and what's more, could it do so without raising suspicion?" I suddenly realised I was shivering like crazy. No wonder, my shoulders and upper torso were totally exposed, and it was a cold April day.

Stevie saw my plight and suggested I should go back to the launch and put on my lovely warm dress. "I'm just going round to look at that pontoon where Jethro must have been working when we arrived yesterday."

"I don't know why you're wasting your time," I called over my shoulder as I ran as fast as I could back to the steam launch. The wonderful thing about a steam launch is that it has a boiler, which gives off lots of heat. We'd left our clothes quite close to it, taking care they weren't going to catch fire; now they were lovely and warm. It had taken me ages to put them on this morning, but it's amazing how quickly you can do things when you're freezing to death. So I was properly dressed and even getting warm again, by the time Stevie returned.

"Did you see anything?" I asked him as I held up his dress for him to slip into.

"It was just a pontoon – a sort of floating box so they can work around a ship's waterline. There was nothing there at all, apart from an old tyre floating in the water. I just don't understand where Jethro was when we arrived yesterday, so he could come up behind us like that."

"Look," I said, having had a chance to get my thoughts around his suggestion. "Maybe you're making mountains out of molehills. All we know is that Jethro keeps his boat here, and that he sneaked up on us yesterday afternoon when we broke in. So what if he's repairing his boat without the permission of the receivers? It really doesn't make him a drug smuggler."

"Then why didn't Harriet explain what he's doing here when we spoke to her about Jethro? And did you notice how she changed the subject just now after we got onto how Jethro is touring the country on the pretext of saving the girls the cost of their train fares. That's a pretty puny excuse anyway. He's obviously distributing the drugs; Mrs Starkey as well, no doubt."

"Mrs Starkey!" I was aghast. "You're saying she's in on it?"

"Abigail." He spoke kindly, knowing how I would feel about it. "The whole village has to be in on it. That's clearly what they plot at their cooperative meetings."

"You mean my aunt, Mr Robinson and Mrs Clark?"

"You told me that Mrs Clark is Jethro's mother. Did you know that Mr Robinson is Mrs Starkey's father?"

"Mrs Starkey's father!" I was gobsmacked. "How did you know that?"

"It's no secret. One of the girls told me at dinner last night."

He was dressed by this time and I thankfully cast off from the dock whilst he powered the launch away and into the main river channel. It gave me a little time to collect my thoughts.

"You haven't met Mrs Starkey, have you?"

He shook his head.

"We'll go and meet her tomorrow. When you see her, you'll realise she couldn't possibly be a drug smuggler."

He didn't look convinced, but by mutual consent we left the conversation there.

***

In fact, Aunt had invited Mrs Starkey over for dinner that evening, so I didn't have to contrive a reason for visiting her. To be honest, I'd always felt rather scared of Mrs Starkey. She was one of those old types of schoolmistress, who could be incredibly strict, but sometimes would have a twinkle in their eye and could be rather fun. She was older than Aunt – I guessed in her mid-sixties but I could be wrong. Looking around the table, it seemed that most of her students felt much the same way as me, and their normally jovial conversation consisted of rather stilted words between themselves.

On the other hand, Stevie seemed to have no inhibitions at chatting to her across the table about all kinds of (what I knew to be) leading subjects, such as the problems of students taking drugs. There were no guilty starts or special glances between Mrs Starkey and my aunt, and she dealt with the questions in a very thorough way; clearly, she knew exactly what to look for and was on top of any drug problems she might come across. I could see that Stevie was thwarted in his ambition to label her as a drug smuggler. I even gave him a smirk, which he returned with a shrug.

I decided to draw a halt to Stevie's sleuthly questioning and said, "Mrs Starkey, what made you start the Language School here in Combehaven?"

"Oh." For the first time she seemed thwarted by a question and looked to my aunt for support.

"I guess it was my idea," Aunt said. "After both the caravan park and the boatyard closed down, we held a village meeting – the first of what would turn into our co-op. We cast our minds around the assets we had and how we could use them to keep the village solvent. The old schoolroom has been hardly used since it ceased to be a school decades ago. Gemma," she turned and smiled at Mrs Starkey, "is another of our tremendous assets. Put the two together, and you have an English as a Foreign Language school. The whole village has been involved in getting the students in and out, and housing and feeding them."

"How many courses have you run so far?" I asked, vaguely wondering why Mrs Starkey hadn't answered my question.

"This is only the second," Mrs Starkey replied for herself, this time. "The first was just to establish it would work, and we only had five students."

"It must be so much more difficult teaching so many, this time," I said.

"Oh, no," she said, at last seeming at home with one of my questions, and she proceeded to give me a lecture on how to teach EFL which lasted for the rest of the meal – like, as though I was interested! I only asked the question to be sociable.

***

"That was brilliant questioning," Stevie said as soon as we had said goodnight to the other girls and closed the door to our bedroom.

"It was?"

"Of course. It made me realise I was totally up a gum tree with this business about the dock and the boat. Whilst you and Mrs Starkey were prattling on about EFL, I asked some of the girls around me how long they'd been in the country. A couple told me the truth, and said they'd come over just for this course. The rest were obviously lying when they told me they'd been here for a few weeks or months."

"Why do you say they were obviously lying?"

"Well..." He paused and looked at me as though I'd asked a really stupid question. "I agree with you; that boat is too small to cross the Channel without raising suspicion. So if the drugs aren't being smuggled in on Jethro's boat, then the girl students must be bringing them into the country, hidden in their luggage."

"In other words," I said, "those girls giving answers which line up with your crackpot theory are telling the truth, and those which don't are liars?"

"Precisely." He looked pleased I'd given such a concise summary.

"Or perhaps," I suggested, "your crackpot theory is rubbish and the girls really are telling the truth."

"Well," he looked puzzled, "how else do you suggest they're smuggling in the drugs?"

"Stevie, there is no drug smuggling." I was getting exasperated. "The reason you came up with the idea was to satisfy your curiosity about the boatyard. Now you concede the boatyard isn't being used for smuggling, just accept that smuggling isn't going on here at all."

"Hmm." He looked thoughtful for a second, then his face suddenly brightened. "I guess it's my time to use the bathroom?"

What else could I say. I'd got him into this. "OK, but don't take too long."

***

He wasn't, damn him! When he came in, I'd been staring in the mirror at my breasts, wondering what it would be like to have breasts Stevie's size, and having dishy rich guys like Larry Pennington leching over them.

"Shucks!" I cried, hurriedly pulling my pyjama top over my head and down my body. "You might have knocked."

"Abigail," he said, "we're all girls together in this house. I didn't knock when I went in the bathroom; it would seem suspicious if I knocked when I entered my bedroom."

"Well you could have taken a little longer."

"Abigail, you told me not to take long. Besides..."

"Besides what?" I asked.

He grinned. "Besides, there were no naked girls in the bathroom, and there was a very pretty one in here."

I sniffed, grabbed my toilet bag and went to the bathroom.

***

I had a dream that I'd gone to pick up the steam launch and Larry Pennington couldn't take his eyes off my huge breasts, which wobbled like jellies with every movement I made. Larry stepped up behind me, put his arms around me and squeezed my jellies; then somehow, I was squeezing my own jellies. Then my jellies turned into Stevie's breasts. Then I woke up!

"I was hoping you wouldn't wake up," Stevie said with a grin as wide as a Cheshire Cat.

I realised I was cupping his breast in my hand – well not just cupping it, but kneading it – and it felt very nice!

"It feels very nice," he said.

I quickly pulled my hand away. "It's plastic," I said. "How can it feel nice?"

He smiled and I couldn't help smiling back at him.

"Anna said you took no notice when Emily was telling you about the Torsolet. She said you wouldn't remember anything about the Sensotouch."

"Sensotouch? What's that?"

He grinned some more. "She was right."

"Stevie. What on earth are you talking about? Emily never said anything about Sensotouch. I don't even know what it means."

"The skin of the Torsolet is touch sensitive, like a smartphone screen and the underside of the Torsolet next to the wearer's skin has tiny electrodes. It means I can effectively feel any kind of touch on my skin. And your squeezing felt very nice."

"I don't remember Emily saying..." I paused. I'd been horrified at the whole nature of the Torsolet, and Emily had been wittering on about something, whilst I was trying to work out how I could remove the horrible thing without hurting Emily and Anna's feelings.

"So when you move and your breasts wobble," I said, "does that mean you feel them wobbling?"

He shrugged. "I can't feel the movement itself, but if they move inside my bra, I can feel that. It turns walking into a whole new experience. I think jogging would probably drive me crazy."

I tried not to think what my squeezing his breasts had done for him.

"I'm taking a shower," I said, locating my toilet bag. "No doubt Aunt is going to dress us up again today and we'll have to sit around like lemons."

"Good-oh," he said.

***

The previous day, after we'd returned from collecting the launch and our additional exploration, we had changed out of our Victorian wear and I'd hung everything out on a washing line in the hope that the fresh wind would blow away most of their smell. It had worked. The clothes smelt as fresh as a daisy when we put them on.

Aunt wanted to maximise the opportunity the steam launch presented, and we spent much of the day being sketched getting into it, climbing out of it and standing around looking like wallies. But Aunt said the sketching was going really well, and with her and Stevie both enjoying it, it seemed churlish not to join in their fun.

It was whilst we were moored in the river, with Aunt sketching us from the bank that Aunt's phone rang.

"Don't move," she yelled to us, and then proceeded to spend ages chatting to someone.

When we eventually finished that particular pose, and got back to shore, Aunt said, "That was Gemma Starkey. Tomorrow is Friday, the day before the girls return home and she's invited you to a dinner party at her house."

"Dinner party!" I exclaimed. "I thought those kinds of things went out of fashion in the 1970s."

"I suspect that so did Gemma Starkey," Aunt replied. "But she likes to give the girls a wider experience than simply classroom lessons and her dinner parties are one of the ways she does that. She's held several over the two weeks the girls have been here. The neighbours take turns to go.

"She was very impressed with the interest you were showing in EFL last night," she continued. "She's hoping to interest you in it as a career."

"Oh. No way!" I said. "I was simply making polite conversation." I had a sudden thought. "What sort of dress is it?" I asked. "It's not formal, is it?"

Aunt smiled. "With Gemma Starkey, how could it be anything else? Have you both got things to wear? I probably have something which would fit you, Abby, but you, Stevie, are far too busty for anything of mine to fit."

Seeing Stevie's face forming a big question mark, I hurriedly replied for us both, "Oh, yes. We've both got things we brought for looking smart. Stevie has a lovely dress, and beautiful matching shoes."

I shouldn't have added that about the shoes, as, knowing she'd be scared by their height, I hadn't yet shown her the pair of stilettos I'd brought in my bag. Their height both fascinated and scared the hell out of me.

"That's good." Fortunately, Aunt hadn't noticed Stevie's face. "Now. I'd like you out in the boat again, with you, Stevie, pointing at a body in the water."

"A body in the water, Aunt! What is this graphic story about?"

"It's about two girls, much like you two, except that they lived in Victorian times. They go to stay with their aunt for Easter, and find all kinds of suspicious things happening, including the dead body in the water."

"How does it end, Harriet?" Stevie asked.

"It turns out there are smugglers in the village," Aunt said, "and most people are turning a blind eye to unusual events."

"Just like here," Stevie blurted out.

Aunt gave him a quizzical look. "There aren't suspicious things going on here, are there Stevie?"

"Well, er..."

"Stevie thinks the boatyard is mysterious," I said. "With Jethro's boat moored there, when most fishing boats are simply beached, ready to put out to sea."

"Jethro turns his hands to most things," Aunt said. "He doesn't fish that much now, so he got the contract to dismantle the metal roof over the dock for scrap. He brought in some cutting equipment on his boat and he'll use his boat to transport the scrap out, when he's ready. But if you really want to learn about the boatyard, speak to Mr Robinson. He'll be at dinner tomorrow and he used to work there. In fact, he's been working there since World War II."

"Really?" Stevie was in his element. "I shall really look forward to that."

Boys! Wanting to talk about docks in WWII!

***

"I suppose I've been stupid, haven't I?"

We were in our bedroom, 'freshening up' before lunch and for once, Stevie had spoken common sense. "There's a perfectly rational explanation for the boat being there, and I've built all my suspicions around it being mysterious. Let's face it, if the village really had been in a smuggling ring, Harriet would hardly have told us the storyline from her book. You must think I'm a right plonker."

"Don't worry," I told him. "I've always thought you a right plonker, and you've made this holiday a whole lot more fun than if I'd been on my own. Thanks for coming with me." On a sudden impulse, I put my arms around him and hugged his breasts against me. They did feel very squishy.

"Thanks for inviting me. This is the best holiday I've ever had."

"Don't be stupid," I said, pushing him away to avoid showing the emotion which had swelled up inside me. "And no way do I have any romantic feelings about you."

Damn! I'd said that word again. Romantic.

***

I should have been delighted that Stevie was no longer pursuing his stupid ideas, but somehow it had made everything more fun. I suspected that with the girls leaving on Saturday morning, life might become rather sedentary.

But in the meantime, we had the excitement of preparing for the dinner party. That evening, we got our dresses out of the wardrobe and looked them over.

"It's a bit revealing," Stevie said, staring at Stephanie's lovely dress.

"This was the most respectable of the dresses Stephanie didn't take with her on holiday," I said. "If I'd brought one of the others, Mrs Starkey would have you labelled as a tart. Slip it on and see how it looks."

Stevie took off the top he'd been wearing since we'd changed out of our Victorian robes. "Do I need to change my bra?" he innocently asked.

"It's a halter neck," I said. "You can't wear a bra with this dress, otherwise it would spoil the effect."

If our positions had been reversed, I'd have been shocked at the very idea of wearing a dress which exposed my boobs like this dress would. But Stevie simply unclipped his bra and let those magnificent breasts wobble unfettered.

Oops! Did I really say magnificent? I mean, I've seen Stephanie Turner plenty of times in the changing rooms without thinking of her breasts as anything other than gross, embarrassing or simply obscene. Now I was calling them magnificent. No way.

Anyway, Stevie stepped into the dress and I helped him pull the halter over his head.

"What do you think?" he asked.

Oh my God! Who could have dreamt that concealed somewhere inside this sexy girl was really Benjamin Walters? "You look very attractive," I told him. "Fortunately, you have some matching tights and shoes which I brought with me."

He gasped when he saw them. "But they're high heels."

High? They were like stilts! "A girl has to get used to wearing heels," I told him. "Sit down and try them on and see how you get on."

I showed him how to put on the tights, and then he slipped his feet into the shoes and I fastened them up for him.

"I can't even stand up, like this. Never mind actually walking a single pace."

"Push your weight down through your heels," I said. I held his hand as he rose to his feet and stood there tottering slightly.

"This is crazy," he said. "I'll fall flat on my face."

"Think of the heel simply as an extension of your leg. Keep your weight back on them. Now, just get your balance." Here I was giving instruction as though I was an expert, when a two-inch heel was the max I'd ever worn.

After a second, he managed to stand without holding my hand, and then he took a tentative step; and then another.

"Try walking along the landing," I suggested after he'd taken a few more hesitant paces around the bedroom.

So I held the door open for him and he went out into the landing slowly walked the length of it.

"Oh, Stevie! What a lovely dress," Aunt said, coming out of her bedroom at that moment.

"Stevie's not used to heels," I said. "But I really think they make the outfit."

"They are rather high to start in," Aunt agreed, "but Abby's right. They are essential for that dress. Do you have any shorter heels you can practice in?"

"Yes, she does," I jumped in before Stevie could answer.

"Then you must wear those this evening and all tomorrow," Aunt said. "You'll be fine for tomorrow evening.

"You really need earrings with that dress," she continued. "Do you have any?"

"She has a lovely matching pair," I said, "but they're for pierced ears and she hadn't had her ears pierced, yet."

"Then we'll go into town tomorrow," Aunt said. "Of course a girl must have pierced ears."

"But... But..." Stevie stuttered.

"No buts. You're having them pierced and that's that. I think we'd better have your hair properly styled, as well, whilst we're about it."

I could see the thoughts running through Stevie's head. Then he said, "Thank you, Harriet. I think you're probably right."

"I'll make an appointment," she said.

***

We spent Friday morning as usual being artists' models, but then, after lunch Aunt drove us into town in the Land Rover.

Aunt took us to one of the smarter hairdressing and beauty salons and offered to pay for both Stevie and my hairstyling.

"Let's face it," she justified it, "I'd be spending a fortune on modelling fees if I had to pay someone to do what you two are doing. It's the least I can do."

I was perfectly happy with my bob, but Stevie's hair was obviously a bit of a botch – the best Anna could achieve with Ben's hair – so Aunt spent ages discussing the options with the stylist. Eventually, they agreed on a short spiky style which Aunt was satisfied she'd be able to cover over with a wig for the Victorian sketching. I was fearful we'd have to start all the sketching from the beginning but Aunt said she could do a sort of cut and paste on the work she'd already done.

Thankfully, we didn't meet any of our friends from either school. Although by now I was pretty confident no one would realise Stevie was really Ben, conversation would have become exceedingly difficult trying to introduce Stevie as Stephanie Turner in front of my aunt, when everybody already knew a different Stephanie Turner, who already had a top and skirt just like the one Stevie was wearing. You can see the problem.

Anyway, we got back to Combehaven without problem, and when Stevie put on her dress, and with her matching heels and earrings, she looked incredible. I felt quite dowdy beside her in my own dress, and I vowed I would get another at the first opportunity. Perhaps I should try a halter – after all, with my figure, it wouldn't be as though I would have to be anything like as daring as Stevie.

***

"Mr Robinson," I said with delight. "You're looking very dapper." He was too, in a dinner jacket – such an unusual sight except in old films.

"And you two ladies are looking very beautiful," he said. And although his eye briefly took in Stevie with her boobs barely concealed by the halter neck, it was me, in my rather drab dress who he seemed to twinkle his eyes at.

"Thank you, Mr Robinson," I said.

I motioned Stevie to thank him for the compliment. Instead, he started straight off with, "Mr Robinson. I understand you're a bit of an expert on the boatyard here; that you used to work there in the war?"

"I did," he admitted, "although even now I'm not supposed to talk about it. It's still classified information."

"Still classified?" Stevie was obviously puzzled. "But there's a lot of information about the X-boats on the Internet. Even all the codebreaking at Bletchley Park is public information now, so why should the boatyard still be classified?"

"If I told you that, it wouldn't be a secret any more, but I suppose every man is susceptible to Mata Hari. With two beautiful women working on me, who knows what state secrets I might reveal?"

He grinned at me as I grinned back. It's funny, but if Jethro had said the same thing, I'd have been freaked out; Mr Robinson saying it was kind of flirty.

Just then, Mrs Starkey called us to the table and we all sat down. There were four girls on the course, and they were interspersed between us four English natives. I sat diagonally opposite Mrs Starkey whilst at the other end of the table, Mr Robinson was placed amongst all the prettiest girls, including Stevie.

It was an enjoyable meal. For most of it, we conversed with the students which I quite enjoyed, and I could see the skill of Mrs Starkey as she drew them into conversation which made them think about things other than nouns and verbs and stuff. As they became engrossed, so their speech became more natural, although still often difficult to follow. All the time, Mrs Starkey kept making comments to me about how enjoyable it was teaching someone English. Hmm. I wasn't convinced but thought it better to smile politely rather than to argue.

Finally, Mrs Starkey was thanking everyone for coming and reminding the students they had an early start the next morning. They all left quite quickly, rather glad, I thought, to get away, and Stevie rather amazingly offered to help clear away the dishes. As he passed me, he whispered, "I've got nowhere in grilling Mr Robinson. You have a try."

I pulled a face at him but obligingly went over to Mr Robinson. "I saw you were engaged in deep conversation with all the beautiful girls surrounding you," I said with a wide grin. "That must have been a great hardship for you."

"What was so bad," he replied, "was being at the other end of the table from the loveliest of them all."

I blushed. "You're crazy," I said. "They were all gorgeous, especially Stevie."

His smile broadened. "She's a real Mata Hari. She terrifies me. Kept interrogating me about the boatyard."

"I'm surprised it's still secret," I said. "I think you're either saying it to wind us up, or it must be something to do with espionage."

"Espionage? Why do you say that?"

I paused a little, trying to put into words the ideas which had been forming in my mind over the course of the evening. "If it was just about torpedoing shipping with small submarines," I said, "there'd be nothing very secret. As Stevie said, it's all on the Internet. But if it was using submarines to spy on shipping entering or leaving an enemy port, well that might still be going on in Russia or China, say."

Mr Robinson tilted his head, acknowledging my point without actually saying so. "But," he said, "during hostilities, all ports were protected by nets hanging from booms, specifically to prevent submarines creeping in. You couldn't get in from the sea."

I realised he was giving me a clue. But what? I suddenly had another 'Wham!' moment. "If the submarine was sufficiently small," I said, "you could parachute it from a plane during a bombing raid. The way they used to drop mines." I knew that after reading the blurb on the WWII mine displayed on Seacombe sea front.

Seeing the encouragement in his eyes, I continued. "It would be tethered to the bottom, just like a mine, and have a periscope and a snorkel."

"If that were true," he said, "it would only be big enough for one man. He'd be stuck there for months completely on his own, eating a very basic diet. It would be incredibly arduous. You'd have to make certain an individual could stand up to that kind of isolation."

"So that's what the dock was used for," I gasped. "Assessing spies who were going to be dropped in tiny submarines into enemy ports?"

"What a ridiculous idea," he said, his smile giving a lie to his words. "I suppose you'll tell Stevie your thoughts, but please don't spread such silly rumours any further."

"Of course not," I said. "And thank you for filling my head with such stupid ideas." As an afterthought, I added, "Was it successful? Did you get lots of information back about ship movements?"

He shook his head. "I don't really know but I suspect not. What I do know is that the programme was dropped about six months after operations began. After that, we started producing mini submarines for carrying a platoon of commandoes onto an enemy shoreline, which was part of the run up to the D-day invasion, but I'd get into real trouble if I told you about that."

"What are you two plotting?" Mrs Starkey interrupted. "He's not inviting you to a midnight assignation, is he?" she asked of me. But she wasn't smiling, and I realised she took her father's outrageous flirting a little too seriously.

"Not yet," I replied, "but I was expecting it at any minute."

"Huh!" She sniffed, clearly not appreciating my sense of humour. "I suppose he'll offer to walk you home, but you're probably safer walking on your own.

Needless to say, he did walk us home and was a perfect gentleman, although he did suggest we each took one of his arms and we walked quite closely together in companionable chatter. I deliberately avoided the secrets he had just told me, as I knew Stevie would start grilling him.

When we reached the intersection where Aunt's house met the village road, we split up and I gave him a kiss on his cheek. After a second's hesitation, so did Stevie.

"Well?" he asked as soon as we were out of earshot. "Did you find out anything?"

I smiled at him, although in the dark I guessed he wouldn't see. "Oh yes," I said. "You may have the boobs, but you don't have the subtlety to be a Mata Hari."

"Maybe not," he acquiesced. He stopped, took my arm and pulled me round to face him and then planted a clumsy kiss on my mouth.

OK, logic says I should have pushed him away. After all, it wasn't as though I fancied him. But those breasts did feel awfully nice, especially since I now knew he could feel me pushing against them, and it was the sheer clumsiness of the kiss which got me. This was no Casanova about to expertly make love to me; this was definitely a first kiss, and who was I to ruin the moment for him. So I pulled him closer to me and snogged him like Harry Fielding had snogged me on that first date.

***

Of course, I had to make it quite clear to him in the few minutes' walk down to the house that it was a one off.

"Just don't go getting any ideas," I said. "No way do I fancy you. Got it?"

"It was very nice though," he said. I could sense he was grinning from ear to ear. I only hoped that he hadn't sensed the same in my words.

"Lots of things are nice," I said. "But you don't necessarily want to repeat them."

"Like what?" he asked.

"Like slapping your face," I said. "So just don't take liberties like that again. All right?"

"You certainly are," he said, adding, "A bit of all right, I mean."

Shucks to him; in the darkness, I was grinning even wider than before.

"Don't you want to know what I found out from Mr Robinson?" I asked. So I went on to tell him the few words which I'd exchanged with him, but behind which were a myriad of untold tales of man's ingenuity and bravery.

"It means there'd be no engine inside it," he said. "It really would be like a bigger version of that mine on Seacombe sea front. That's a pity."

"A pity? Why?"

"I was wondering whether they might be using mini-submarines to do their smuggling."

"But I thought you'd agreed there was nothing in that but your imagination," I gasped, amazed he should still be thinking of it.

"I agreed that using the fishing boat wouldn't work, but I got thinking that if you had a submarine you could come right up river without Customs seeing you."

"You mean you'd cross from France in a mini-submarine? That's ridiculous!"

"I looked it up. X-class subs had a range of five hundred miles. They could easily do there and back."

"But it would suffer just the same problem as the fishing boat; hardly any space for storage."

"Drugs don't need much space."

The argument seemed to be going over the same ground, so I chose to say nothing, and just to show him, I slapped his hand when he reached out to take mine. "No way," I repeated.

***

Saturday was the day when Mrs Starkey and Jethro were ferrying the students to various parts of the country. That meant an early breakfast for everyone. As soon as I walked across the landing to the bathroom, it was bedlam, as the girls were running around doing their last minute packing. There were some bags piled up on the landing, whilst others were still being stuffed with last minute items, and, in spite of the English-only ruling, a few girls were jabbering in their own language.

I was still in the shower when Anastasia entered the bathroom. "I am looking for Steffi," she said. "She is not in your bedroom."

"She went downstairs," I said. I was about to add we'd had a bit of a tiff, as Stevie wanted to search the girls' bags for drugs, and I wouldn't allow it.

"It no matter," she said. "She borrow my rabbit and I want to tell her she can keep it as present. She say it make her very happy. You and Steffi good friends to us."

"It's been great fun meeting you all," I said, feeling quite touched by her statement. I vaguely wondered what she meant by a rabbit, but by that time, I'd got used to them replacing one of their Croatian words for an English one when they didn't know it. I've done the same when speaking French.

Breakfast was frantic, with all the girls running around, stuffing pieces of food in their mouths and trying to do other things as well. Then it was hugs all round, by which time Stevie had reappeared, and from the way they kissed Stevie, I wondered whether some of them might be lesbian.

The minibus had been left up by the main road, and Jethro was ferrying the girls up there in the Land Rover, so it was a succession of squeezing into it, waving frantically to the three of us, and then they had gone.

As the Land Rover disappeared for the last time, it suddenly seemed very quiet.

"We've a hard day ahead of us, girls," my aunt said, breaking the silence. "All the rooms have to be cleaned and the bedding changed and laundered. Let's go back and have a leisurely end to our breakfast, and then make a start."

***

The next few days were very different to the first four, and were much more along the lines of the holiday break I'd expected. Cleaning out the girls' rooms might have been a chore without Stevie. But he made the process such fun that we simply whistled around, getting the sheets in the washing machine, and then hung out to dry, the rooms cleaned, the bathroom made spick and span again, that it was done in a few hours.

Aunt had asked that we return the steam launch to the Penningtons, a task we were happy to undertake as it gave us another excuse for being on the river. We towed Aunt's little boat, to be used for the return journey, behind the steam launch. Neither of the Penningtons were around, but there was a young woman there, apparently a relative of a long dead author who used to live in the house, and she showed us around the museum which the Penningtons had created about her.

It was an interesting way to spend the afternoon, given we were no longer chasing smugglers and, without the Land Rover. Of course, Stevie wanted to visit the boatyard on the way back, and I went along with it as I couldn't be bothered to argue. Since we were dressed in our normal clothes, there was no problem climbing the ladder from the boat up to the dock, although of course, Stevie exposed her panties as she climbed up in her tartan miniskirt. It was just as boring as last time and I simply sat on a large bollard in the sun whilst Stevie scurried around from place to place

"By the way," I said to him as he came past me. "Anastasia said she'd lent you her rabbit, whatever she meant by that…" That's when he jumped about three feet in the air.

"I'm not sure what she meant, either," he said, although he obviously knew.

"Whatever it is," I said, making a mental note to look up rabbit in the Croatian-English translator on the web, "she says you can keep it as a present."

"Right," he said, and then abruptly changed the subject. "You were right about searching their rucksacks. It was simply impossible in that chaos, with everybody dashing around like crazy."

"I said you weren't to do it because those girls were our friends," I protested, "not because it was difficult to do."

"Whatever," he dismissed. "I was going to try to search Katya's bag as I thought she was probably the most likely of them all to have the goods. In fact she did the whole thing for me. She was suddenly tearing all the things out of her rucksack looking for her purse, when she'd really left it on the hall table. Of course, if they'd known I was really a boy, I'd have been in dead trouble, because it was incredibly erotic having all these frillies thrown up in the air. But there were certainly no drugs in her baggage."

"Since you've seen Katya naked several times, I don't see how her frilly underwear could be more erotic," I said.

He shrugged. "Neither do I, but it was."

"And you're now satisfied they aren't a bunch of smugglers so what exactly are we doing here?"

"They may not be smugglers, but there's still the Mystery of the Water in the Dock to be solved."

I shook my head. Steve was a hopeless case.

However, I thought, it was still great having him around.

***

So, the next few days, we spent most of our time as artists' models. On Easter Sunday, we put on the fabulous Victorian dresses Aunt had got us for the occasion (did I say fabulous?). Well, actually, by this time I'd got thoroughly used to our Victorian gear (although I suppose Victorian ladies didn't say gear!). Whatever, it now felt quite natural to wear those clothes and we both felt fantastic in those superb dresses.

Of course, Aunt had really got the dresses so she could sketch us and we spent most of Easter Sunday and the Monday sitting around pretending to read Victorian magazines, whilst tucked inside them we had our smartphones and were browsing the web, or whatever. I had suggested we could go into Seacombe on Monday and watch the festivities which were put on for the Bank Holiday, but Aunt scoffed that, saying Seacombe would be horribly packed with all kinds of drunken louts, and we were much better staying there. To be honest, I was quite happy simply sitting in the sun and looking pretty.

I was a bit surprised on Monday evening when Aunt said she was going to have an early night, as she felt quite tired. She reminded us the students would be arriving the next day so we shouldn't be surprised if we heard the Land Rover driving by in the middle of the night to go and get them. We both shrugged. Whatever.

We watched TV for a while and then went to bed.

***

"Abigail." Steve's whisper took me by surprise.

"What is it? And why are we whispering."

"I can hear your aunt moving about."

"What about it. Perhaps she's going to the toilet."

"No. I heard her alarm go off a few minutes ago. I think she's getting up."

I sat up in bed and went to switch on the bedside light, but Stevie reached across to stop me. His breast gave me a soft push in the chest.

"She'll see our light shining around the door frame."

"What about it?" I still couldn't understand why we were whispering.

"I'll pull the curtains," he said, "then we can get dressed in the light from the moon. We need to see what she's up to."

This was totally stupid, I thought, but then another part of me remembered those books I'd read when I was young about the adventures that girls got up to at boarding school. They had tempted me to become a boarder, only to find those experiences were totally false. Until now!

It may have been stupid, but as soon as Stevie had drawn back the curtains, I obediently got out of bed and started to get dressed. It was only when I noticed Stevie giving me the eye that I realised I had pulled off my pyjamas without even bothering to turn away from him. I smirked, and pulled a tee shirt over my head.