"You're only ever just enough," she reassures him with a grin. "It's more that he's got a summer job, and some weekends he's staying out in the countryside--his parents aren't together, which is fine, it's not as embarrassing as it'd be back home or anything--but it means he's away some of the time."

Her blush deepening, she nods emphatically in answer to his question. "Nobody ever fancied me, back home," she admits. "Unless you count Colin in year two, who told me I was quite pretty, he supposed, which isn't at all the same thing."