England's Dreaming

By Justine Elyot

On the day of Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee, worlds collide, and so do bodies. A pearl-wearing girl and a punk boy—can it ever work?

Everybody in Camberwick Square is thrilled to be celebrating the Queen's Silver Jubilee—everyone, that is, except the punk-rock squatters at number forty-one. When auction-house assistant Emily tries to interest art student Ciaran in joining in the jamboree, he ends up much more personally involved than he ever envisaged.

They aren't exactly the best-matched couple in the world, but somehow their breathless passion takes them through street parties and fetishwear shops, towards their final destination of a rather special boat trip on the Thames.

But will passion be enough to keep this pearl-wearing princess and Irish punk boy together against the odds? Or will convention prevail and hold them apart?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Totally Bound Publishing
• Release date: May 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9780857159762

Justine Elyot

Justine Elyot is the author of the bestselling erotic novels On Demand and The Business of Pleasure, as well as enough short stories to fill several anthologies. She can be found on Twitter @JustineElyot and sharing the wealth on facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000057776729. Full blow-by-blow details of her goings-on can be found at her website: http://justineelyot.com/.

Book preview

A Total-E-Bound Publication

www.total-e-bound.com

England’s Dreaming

ISBN #978-0-85715-976-2

©Copyright Justine Elyot 2012

Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright May 2012

Edited by Amy Parker

Total-E-Bound Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

Published in 2012 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.

Warning:

This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Total-e-burning and a sexometer of 2.

This story contains 54 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 10 pages.

Stiff Upper Lip

ENGLAND’S DREAMING

Justine Elyot

On the day of Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee, worlds collide, and so do bodies. A pearl-wearing girl and a punk boy – can it ever work?

Everybody in Camberwick Square is thrilled to be celebrating the Queen's Silver Jubilee—everyone, that is, except the punk-rock squatters at number forty-one. When auction-house assistant Emily tries to interest art student Ciaran in joining in the jamboree, he ends up much more personally involved than he ever envisaged.

They aren't exactly the best-matched couple in the world, but somehow their breathless passion takes them through street parties and fetishwear shops, towards their final destination of a rather special boat trip on the Thames.

But will passion be enough to keep this pearl-wearing princess and Irish punk boy together against the odds? Or will convention prevail and hold them apart?

Dedication

To everyone who remembers ‘77.

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Oxfam: Oxfam International

Westwood: Vivienne Westwood

Seditionaries: Vivienne Westwood

Battersea Dogs Home: Battersea Dogs and Cats Home

Zippo:  Zippo Manufacturing Company

News at Ten: ITN

Vaseline: Unilever

Bohemian Rhapsody: Queen

New Rose: The Damned

The Glenn Miller Orchestra: The Miller Family

Chapter One

June 1977

Don’t go near that rabble at number forty-one.

Why not, Daddy? They’re people too.

Emily’s father rustled his newspaper. Barely.

The party’s for the whole street. Not the whole street except for number forty-one.

Stay away. They’re anarchists and pond-dwellers. Hardly the sort who’ll want to celebrate Her Majesty’s Silver Jubilee, I’d say.

Have you met them? Spoken with them?

He put down his paper and withdrew the pipe from his mouth.

If you want to be a social worker, Emily, you can pay me back for that expensive education you’ve just completed. They’re riff-raff and I forbid you to go near them.

She laughed. You can’t forbid me, Daddy. I’m over twenty-one. I’m all grown up now. Anyway, I must get on. These street parties take an awful lot of arranging and Mummy can’t do it all.

Emily breezed out of the breakfast room as fast as her heels would carry her. She stopped at the hall table to pick up a clipboard and wrap a silk scarf around her neck, then stepped out into a glorious summer’s day in Camberwick Square.

Everything about this tranquil London square was picturesque and pleasing. Freshly painted rails enclosed a miniature garden bursting with blooms, and peopled with elderly residents on benches and frolicking tots with their uniformed nannies. The white-fronted houses that surrounded it were elegant and well-kept, mansions for millionaires—except for one.

Number forty-one, on the far corner, was neglected and unkempt. Black bags of rubbish were piled high all the way up the basement steps, and several windowpanes had been replaced by bodged cardboard or woodchip. The customary calm of the square was sometimes shattered by terrible three-chord guitar riffs and deafening drumming, but today all was quiet, it seemed.

Emily looked down at her clipboard, on which was a long list of party foods and essentials. Some of these items had names and numbers beside them, already promised by the good residents of Camberwick Square, but there were still a few addresses yet to claim their share of the responsibility.

One of these was number forty-one.

She looked across the road at it, dismayed at its tattered appearance. She had only been teasing her father earlier, but all the same… Who were those people? Her imagination and Papa’s frothing fulminations had built up quite a terrifying picture between them. They had been described variously as layabouts, savages, ne’er-do-wells, criminals. The birch, hanging and national service should all be brought back for the likes of them, apparently.

But the likes of what? Emily wondered. In the year she had been living back with her parents since getting her job at the auction house, she had never once seen one of these mysterious inhabitants.

I’m going to do it, she told herself, striding along the pavement towards the corner of the square. The worst they can do is…kidnap me? Murder? Rape? Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, Em.

Her shoes