They got off at Turramurra, and he walked with her.

“Aren’t you going out of your way?” she asked, wondering where exactly he lived.

“It won’t be for me now,” he said, “I like going to Swain Gardens after school sometimes.”

“Wouldn’t it still be quicker for you to go straight along towards Brentwood Avenue?” she asked.

“I can get there later. It’s just nice to talk to you,” he said.

“Well Lewis, you don’t need to walk ME home!” she shouted down at him.

The eruption of her angry outburst had been so loud and unexpected, that it left him stunned, crushed and disappointed.

On the Friday night, he arrived early, told Jenny about it and asked what he’d done wrong.

”I don’t think you did anything wrong,” said Jenny, “She just didn’t appreciate your company. There’ll be other people here who will.”

In early April of 1997, the group went on a camp. If his parents had only known that their son was actually camping down south in the Robertson of a parallel double sized earth.

He found himself sitting next to a girl named Angela Runga. She was over a year younger than he was, and two years below him in school. Yet she was easy to talk to, as the Friday evening bus trip took them towards Robertston. In the seats around theirs, jokes were being made about the length of time that Angela and Lewis had been talking to each other. Angela was a pleasant friendly girl. Yet she had not stirred in him any romantic reaction like his unrequited feelings for Marjorie, or his even stronger feelings for the stunningly beautiful Lynda on his own Earth. To her she was merely the female equivalent of his male friends. So he had no shy reticence, and no difficulty engaging her in conversation, just as he did with his male friends at school.

So he had no idea that Angela was keenly attracted to him. At the end of the weekend, one of the boys said, “Angela likes you, but she thinks you’re a bit boring.”

He still didn’t understand that the girl had been hoping he’d take the opportunity to kiss her. Instead he’d spent the weekend inviting her to play board games and making casual conversation. He wouldn’t have known what to do, had he had a better response from Marjorie, who had conveniently avoided the camp, … and now he hadn’t even recognised the response he was getting from Angela.

In the next two months, he made friends with two other girls: Alexandra Stives and Naomi Wise. They were close friends with each other, and went to the same girls school, although Alexandra was also in year 10. Naomi was 18 months older than them and in year 11. The girls mentioned that they were going to visit their year 12 friend Anne White, who was in hospital. Alexandra had short hair, a lovely face, a subtle sense of humour, and might well have inspired Lewis to try, had he not been so reluctant after his bad experience with Marjorie. Yet Alexandra and Naomi had both told each other, in the course of a conversation which included him, that they never intended to get married.