Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

A Certain Age

PENGUIN BOOKS

A CERTAIN AGE

Rebbecca Ray lives in central London and is currently on holiday.

REBBECCA RAY

A Certain Age

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PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

Published 1998

Copyright © Rebecca Ray, 1998

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-192736-7

For Nick. For Jules. For Tim.

Thank you

Acknowledgements

Christine Adams – for getting me started when a start was what I needed.

Cath Allan and all the Storehouse Writers – for being kind to me, for their encouragement, and for showing me that you don't need publishing to be a writer.

Sonia and George Archdale – for their hospitality and patience.

Dan and Bel Butler – for their constant help, for putting up with me in their house.

Peter Cox – for his interest and his honest opinions.

Chris and Nuala Dickman – for their massive generosity.

Jay Dickman – for stopping my head from swelling too much. Thanks to you, I can still just about get it through doors.

Juliet Ennis – for telling me to keep going when I thought there wasn't any point. For being my friend.

Sian Gwyn – for being a good teacher; I thought they were a myth. I wish I could have stayed to learn more.

Philip Joseph – for helping me when he didn't have to; for his advice, his support and for a very nice lunch.

Alec Newman – for teaching me and teaching me and teaching me. For being a wonderful uncle.

Paul Poole – for keeping my computer alive when euthanasia probably would have been the best option.

Hilda Ray – for her thoughtfulness, her kindness and her incredibly caring nature.

Stephen King – for being the only writer who inspired me to write myself.

I was about thirteen when I started letting the boys feel me up. There was a whole bunch of them, four or five, and at lunchtime we'd all meet up; smoking a spliff out on the pitch if it was sunny, round their table in the library if it wasn't. We'd all be sitting around, eating our lunches, and Joel or Craig or some other boy I didn't really like would start putting his hand up my shirt. Or my skirt, I had a really short skirt and fucking awful legs but I'd roll the waistband up on it to make it shorter anyway.

It was never some big major thing, they just did it while they were talking. I guess my tits weren't as interesting as talking about what makes the best roach material, but they kind of filled the gap between Rizla packets and tape covers.

I didn't talk much, just listened to them. Well, everyone listened really, you didn't have much of a choice. I guess they hadn't seen the sign on the wall that said SILENCE IS GOLDEN AND THIS LIBRARY IS FOR READING. But then, they didn't really have to pay attention to things like that because they were popular.

The tables in the library were arranged so that as many people as possible had to sit with their backs to each other, and they were fixed to the floor so no one could move them. The librarian's name was Mrs Midwinter, which sounds like something out of Dickens but isn't. Nobody believed she was a Mrs, either – she didn't have any wedding ring. She was a very tall woman and her clothes weren't quite tall enough for her body. She had a huge load of grey hair piled up on top of her head and really pink cheeks that looked like she'd been slapped both sides. She was the sort of person that always spoke in a whisper, even when she was shouting.

She was new to the school, a replacement for the old librarian, Miss Herbert, who'd had a nervous breakdown. I wasn't in the school then but I heard it happened when someone hacked into the computers so that every time anyone used them they locked out with one single message flashing on the screen. All eight printers going berserk, printing HERBY FUCKS HERSELF WITH A RULER UNDERNEATH THE DESK till they started chewing up the paper. Everyone said Mrs Midwinter was just temporary but I didn't think Miss Herbert would work with children again. I heard from our form tutor that she was a born-again Christian now, but people have funny ways of dealing with things. Maybe that was why they decided to hire Midwinter as a replacement. She looked like your granny on the surface, but I knew she'd trained with the marines.

Even Mrs Midwinter couldn't handle our table, though, because our table wasn't just five boys. Our table had Holly, and Holly could do what she wanted. Holly was perfect. Long, slim legs, big tits, big mouth, eyes; everything was big except her arse. Natural-blonde hair. She was the kind of person who warned everyone she was going to fart and gangs of blokes flocked round her, just to get a whiff. Sometimes, while everyone else was talking, she'd take out this little pocket mirror and lay it on the table, bend over it and spend an hour or so squeezing spots that weren't there. Her face'd go lumpy and swollen and all puffy when she squeezed, her eyes'd water. But red and lumpy looked good on Holly. I wished I could be red and lumpy like she was.

She hardly ever went out in town. I never did either, but I didn't have a good reason like Holly. Her sister was in university, and she went out to city clubs with her, I heard her talking about it sometimes. Clubs you had to have ID for, clubs you had to be twenty-one for, but all the clubs let Holly in for free. She didn't even have to let the bouncers feel her tits. Holly didn't have to let anyone feel her tits, but I wasn't like Holly. I never would be like Holly, so I had to find another way of getting along. I had to let them feel me up.

I didn't like doing it but I didn't really hate it either. It's one of those things you get used to, like bras that cut off the circulation in your nipples. It was necessary. I knew I'd never really be one of them, they'd all been friends since they were little so they could tell me to fuck off whenever they wanted. I never kidded myself, I knew that wasn't going to change. But I got to be sought after in a funny, dirty kind of way. I got the wolf whistles and the stares. Because I wanted them. And because I wasn't the kind of girl you had to like. I was the kind of girl you fucked.

Not that I did fuck them, any of them. Things never went that far. But still, they knew they could, if that was what they asked for, and I guess it added up to the same. It felt good in a way, though. I wanted to go to school every day, I wanted to hear their cat calls, I wanted to feel their hands. I guess I felt, for the very first time, like I'd been accepted.

I never thought I would be, you see. Things started off badly at High School and I never thought they'd get better. Things started badly from the very first lesson on my very first day. From the moment that I realized I needed a shit.

I was sitting in maths, mid period, they'd sat us alphabetically so we could all be friends. I went to the front of the room, trying to push my thighs together and still walk in a way that looked near normal. It didn't help. I could tell that they'd all noticed me by the way the room went silent. Everyone just sitting there and I could see on their faces the one thought going round: there goes a girl who needs a shit. The door sounded very loud when I closed it behind me.

The PTA had set up signs in every corridor pointing out the toilets. Only someone had crossed out Toilets on the one in the maths block. They'd written Shit Holes instead, and I guess I could see why.

The whole block had that damp lavatory smell and the concrete was stippled to hold the stains better. One of the cubicle doors was open and I could see toilet paper flowing out of the bowl and over the seat, clogged up, with a tampon on top like a cherry. All the paint was chipped off the doors and none of the locks worked, so that you had to piss with one leg up, holding the door closed, getting piss all over your leg. I headed for the cubicle on the corner, unzipped my fly and took a handful of paper to make a careful circle on the seat. I'd already let things roll by the time the voice said

‘Christ! what a smell!’

I froze on the toilet seat, halfway to relief.

‘Smells like a dog's!’

‘It is a fucking dog's!’

Laughter. And I was only half through. I stared at the door in front of me. Someone had written LEILA FUCKS HORSES on it in Tippex.

‘Smells like hippy shit.’

‘Hippies smell like that anyway.’

It was still coming. I didn't believe in God, but I prayed then. I prayed it would be quiet. It wasn't.

‘Fuck! There goes another one! Sounds like a veggie-burger just hit the fan!’

‘A hippy burger, you mean.’

They said more than that. A lot more, but I don't remember much of it. I thought if I waited there in silence long enough they might start to believe they were talking to an empty lavatory. So I sat there, skirt around my midriff, trying to breathe as quietly as I could.

Being embarrassed, that was my mistake. If I'd walked out as soon as they'd started, if I'd made some joke about it, everything would have been Ok. But I was always the sort of person who tried to cover their farts and failed. So I froze.

And after about fifteen minutes, the voices stopped. I thought I'd won; outwaited them. Either they thought they'd made a mistake, or they'd just got bored and left. I wiped. I flushed. I stood up and opened the door. And I came face to face with them.

‘Have a nice shit, hippy?’ She was blonde, but I didn't really see her face. I walked to the sinks, not looking at them but knowing they were looking at me, and I washed my hands.

‘Hippies shouldn't be allowed to use the same bogs.’

‘They stink 'em out for everyone else.’

‘I thought you liked shitting in the bushes best?’

I dried my hands on one of those paper towels that are designed not to absorb moisture.

‘Nice talking to you, hippy.’

‘Fuck off back to your caravan.’

I dropped it in the waste basket as I walked away. And I didn't say a word.

Dad asked me about my first day just about as soon as he got home, and I'm not really sure why I lied to him. I was sitting in the kitchen watching Mum make the nut roast when he brought a bag of shopping in, bending through the door. I could tell by the way his breath went up and down that he was tired. Still, he spared a smile for me, sitting down at the kitchen table. Across the room, I heard Mum switch the radio on, and I didn't speak, biting my lip, waiting for him to ask.

‘Christ,’ he said, and pulled his tie out sideways, reaching for the shopping bag. The kitchen light made a little warm spot on his bald patch. ‘So,’ he said. He looked across at me, pulled a beer can from the bag. ‘How'd it go?’

‘It was excellent,’ I said.

‘Really?’ He gave a nod, slow and staring at the table. ‘Good…’

‘We did physics. They don't call it science, right – they call it physics. English, art…’

‘Uh-huh. And how did that go?’

‘What, the art? Cool. The teacher's really nice and she let us sit wherever we wanted. We started a self-portrait, right…’

‘A self-portrait?’ He looked up, cracked the can. ‘You did those with me ages ago.’

‘Yeah… but she says we're gonna learn how to do them with perspective.’

‘We did that too. Last summer. Christ, you know these teachers spend half their time trying to catch up.’ His eyes swapped back to the table. ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘You'll know how to do a good job, anyhow.’ He breathed out and I saw him glance behind my shoulders. ‘I bought some extra oil,’ he said. ‘I thought we'd probably need some if you're doing roast. You are doing roast, yeah?’

Mum nodded, starting from her place by the counter, but I didn't look at her for long.

‘So can I see it then?’ He took a swig. ‘This self-portrait? If this teacher's as crap as she sounds then I'll still be able to help.’

‘Help?’ I looked up at him, and Mum's arm came down between us. I could see his face was raised to me, his eyebrows kind of hopeful, and I was pretty relieved when Mum said

‘This is Flora.’ She tilted the bottle at him. ‘It's 50p more expensive, Philip.’

I saw Dad's mouth open but I got there first. My laugh sounded too loud over the radio. ‘Oh no! A whole 50p more expensive? How will we afford it? Fifty pence!’ I moved around her arm so he could see me shaking my head. ‘Fifty pence…’ I said, but Dad didn't answer.

‘I could help you sketch it out tonight,’ he said. ‘Give her a shock next lesson.’

‘I…’ I looked down at the table, pressed my lips together. ‘I'm not sure you're allowed help in High School. I mean, it's not that I don't want you to…’

‘Oh.’ I watched him put the can on the table. ‘I see,’ he said.

‘It's just… I mean, it wouldn't be fair, would it? Me getting help and no one else.’

‘Right,’ Dad said. He shifted, leaning back quickly as his breath squeezed out. He didn't look at me. ‘No, I can see why. You're in High School now… you don't want Dad looking over your shoulder at everything you do.’

‘It's not that. It…’ But I wasn't really sure what it was. I kept thinking of that blonde girl's face and the way her lip curled up when she looked at me.

‘It's a big change after all, Dad said. ‘And I knew this would happen. It's a big move. You're going to make new friends. You'll change…’ He looked at me. ‘Just make sure you don't change in the wrong direction.’

Make new friends, I thought. Yeah, I'd certainly done a good job today; maybe Veggieburger-Shitting Hippy was just a friendly kind of nickname. I bit my lip and looked at Dad but he'd already turned away. I felt my stomach sink.

‘What are you doing?’ His voice had got colder, watching Mum's elbow tilt as she poured oil into the roasting pan. ‘Liz, that's cold oil for God's sake.’

She didn't look back at him. ‘I'm going to put them in in a minute.’

I breathed out while he was looking away from me, rubbed my hand against the grain of the table. Thinking of the way his voice had sunk – Oh I see – sent a sharp thing through my chest. I wasn't even sure why I'd said no.

‘In a minute?’ Dad said, and his voice hadn't got any lighter. ‘So, what: you're just going to let them lie there in cold oil? Those are parsnips aren't they? They'll get all greasy.’

‘I wouldn't have done it if it was going to hurt them, Philip. I'm going to cook them.’

I looked up at the wall. There's a cork board up above our kitchen table where Mum used to hang a lot of our pictures, when we were only five or six. She doesn't hang so many pictures there these days, though. Which is weird really. We've got a lot better since then. Only because of Dad's help, though.

He doesn't help Michael so much as he helps me, but Michael's never appreciated his help, that's what Dad says. And now I wasn't appreciating him either. I thought of all those hours he'd spent, teaching me about cross-hatching and structure. All that time, and after four hours in High School I was giving him the brush-off. Sitting at the table I pressed my ankles together, hard, so that they hurt a little bit. I bit my lip, but still that voice in my head was going round. I thought hippies liked shitting in the bushes best? And I wondered what that had to do with it.

Their voices bounced back and forward, like the ball on that old ping-pong computer game you still see around sometimes, and I picked at a hang-nail on the side of my thumb. I'd got a nice house. Not a semi-detached in town, but an old school my dad had spent a lot of money on getting converted. It's quite a way out of town, and in the morning you can hear the birds twittering to each other as well as the traffic from the main road. When Dad found it, it had no roof. He said it would be different, it would be wonderful, he said he knew because he had vision, and I guess he was right because it's got a roof now. It's not a tepee, or anything.

Dad's spent years trying to get our house just right for us, choosing all the stuff. He bought these great big sliding doors to go right across the front of it, but they're old and sometimes they get wet inside from all the condensation. Our cat licks the dribbles off when he's allowed inside. He lives on top of the washing machine in the porch, and he's got a little box there, full of old blankets and stuff. It smells, but Mum's always leaving the laundry on top of it anyway. You can tell when it's been left in the box, the clothes have got hairs all over them and patches of dried dribble. He doesn't mean to dribble, our cat, he can't help it because he's old. And all old cats dribble, I think. It doesn't make our house any different from anyone else's. There's an ironing board next to the washing machine in our porch, but no one ever irons on it. It's got cobwebs between the legs from never being moved, and sometimes the cat craps in the gap behind. He knows no one will find it for weeks. I wondered if that blonde girl'd got an ironing board, and where it was kept in her house.

‘Christ.’ Dad looked round at me. ‘She always does this, you know?’ I looked up, saw his slight smile settle as I nodded. Seeing that smile I felt something relax in my stomach, something that had tightened without me even noticing. I wished he'd smile like that more often. ‘You fancy slimy parsnips for dinner?’ He laughed. ‘Mmmm. Cold and greasy. I bet you can't wait.’

I shrugged, measuring my smile exactly as I felt his pick up at the corners of my own mouth. ‘Well, you know,’ I said quietly. ‘I've got used to them.’

Dad's eyes only rested on me a moment but it was a good moment. Long enough to take some more of that tightness away.

‘You hear that?’ he said. ‘She doesn't want them covered in cold oil either, Liz.’

Their voices faded away again as Dad's eyes left me, and the thought of that blonde girl came back. It rose up, like indigestion when you eat too many chips. I wondered if cold greasy parsnips were a hippy thing too. I didn't know, that was the funny thing. I had no idea what made a hippy, what the little differences might be.

I tried to think through other people's houses, work out where that difference lay. Like the newspapers, maybe. Mum keeps those in the porch as well. Hundreds of them, mostly the Guardian and Hello! Lying on the floor, discarded like that always makes me think it should be called Goodbye! She keeps all the newspapers she reads and she reads loads. She says you never know when they might come in handy, but I do. I know exactly when they'll come in handy. When we find the craps behind the ironing board. She gets cross when people use them for that though.

They argue about the newspapers, Mum and Dad, because Mum doesn't care about our house or all the effort Dad's put into making it nice for us. He says the newspapers show that. He says people have to come through the porch to get to the house and they have to step over them. He says it gives the wrong impression, and I wondered vaguely what that impression might be. That this house was a hippy house, perhaps.

‘Look, Philip. Are you trying to start an argument? You trying to piss me off?’

‘Are you trying to make a horrible dinner?’

‘If you don't like it, don't eat it, alright? I don't give a shit!’

‘Well I can see you don't give a shit, woman! That's your problem!’

Dad wears suits most of the time, and I never saw a hippy wearing a suit. They look great on him too. He keeps all his clothes in his office, so they never go near the airing cupboard, he says, and I can kind of see why.

‘Don't tell me how to cook a meal then! I never interfere with what you're doing! When was the last time you cooked a meal for the family? When?’

Mum calls it the airing cupboard, even though there's hardly any air in it. When I was very little and first understood that you were supposed to wear pairs of socks, Mum told me it was the Sock Monster's fault that I didn't have any. She said it lived in the airing cupboard and I believed her because it looked a bit like a monster's den. She said the Sock Monster ate socks but never pairs, that's why I had to wear one black, one blue. She said we were lucky to have a Sock Monster but I don't think Dad agreed.

By the time I lost my frog mittens, the ones with the strings that go through the back of your coat, I didn't believe in the Sock Monster anymore. Sock Monsters don't eat frog mittens with strings, otherwise they'd be Sock And Mitten Monsters, I thought. I found a spanner in the airing cupboard once, but it wasn't any big surprise. Dad's workshop was full of old clothes, so it seemed kind of logical.

‘…Just because you can shout louder, Philip! Well, I can shout as much as you can!’

My friends' dads' workshops aren't anything like my dad's, but I don't see why that would make us hippies. Theirs are always small and usually part of the garage, and all the tools hang up on neat little pegs on the walls. Sometimes they're even labelled, and the nails and screws and those funny U-shaped pegs all have their own boxes – a place for everything and everything in its place. Work clothes hang up on pegs on the walls, aprons and gloves and stuff like that. Dad's workshop's different. It has pegs and shelves around the walls too but Dad never bothers with them, he just uses the floor.

‘You're the one who's shouting, Liz. You're just fucking uptight tonight.’

There used to be a chair, somewhere inside the shed, that Mum asked him to reupholster for her sister's wedding present, but she got divorced before he could do it, and even though they're back together now, we haven't found it since.

None of that stuff ever changes, though. It's always been that way, like Dad helping me with my art. And watching Mum stand there, her face scrunched red against the background wall, I clenched my teeth together.

‘I was in a great mood till you came in! And if I'm uptight it's just because… because… All I'm trying to do is cook you a meal! You can cook it your fucking self if you want!’

‘Cook it yourself… Thanks Liz. Thanks for a really nice dinner. I will cook it myself. And it won't taste like shit either.’

‘FUCK YOU!’

‘Yeah,’ Dad nodded, but his smile was kind of sad. ‘Fuck you too, love,’ he said. ‘It's so nice coming home.’

Dad kind of collapsed as Mum left the room. I watched him flop down on to the table, try to smile as he looked up at me.

‘I'm sorry,’ I said.

He shrugged, looked vaguely round the kitchen. ‘Great welcome,’ he said. I couldn't think of anything to answer though, anything to make it better. I looked at Dad's face and I wished he'd smile again. Don't change in the wrong direction, I thought. But I couldn't even work out which direction that was. Maybe it was best not to try.

‘It'll sort itself out,’ I said. ‘Always does.’

‘Yeah…’ But his eyes didn't look any better, staring at me as he said ‘I'm glad you had a good time anyway.’

‘Mmm,’ I said. A good time. I'd tried, I really had. Tried to have a good time, tried to say hello to people, all that stuff that you're supposed to do. I'd just failed. Funny really, I didn't even understand why. And, watching Dad's attempt at a smile slip further down his face, I drew a breath in, bit my lower lip. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Maybe… maybe if you still want to, you could help me with my picture. Yeah?’

*

Things got a lot better in school after a while, though. They got better when I worked out the way to act. Holly's way was just to be herself, she didn't need anything more. Mine was to let people touch me. It wasn't such a bad way really. And by the time I hit the Third Year things were pretty much Ok. Better than Ok: things were good. Because that was when I started noticing Robin. When he started noticing me.

Robin never touched me, that was the first thing I noticed about him, and it was strange because he could have done. He wasn't good-looking, but he had this aggressive kind of confidence that made up for it, and he was pretty high up in the group. A while before I got to know them all, Robin's mother had miscarried in her fifth month. Twins. Both dead. Everyone in school knew about it but Robin said he didn't give a fuck. He acted like it too. He was strong, I think, not physically but in some other way, and no one gave him any shit.

He was blond, smaller than Joel but bigger than Craig, and he didn't talk a lot like Craig did. His hair was so light that sometimes, looking at him from a certain angle, you couldn't even see his eyelashes. He had a slightly pug nose too. None of that mattered to me of course, I would have let him touch me. Only Robin never seemed very interested in me. Which was maybe why I was so surprised when I first caught him looking my way. It was June, I think, and we were out at the back of the pitch. It was the day that Holly announced she was pregnant.

Craig had got hold of a copy of More! and he was reading out the problem page. Joel was there too but he was busy skinning up, so for the time being I just sat there, waiting for my turn.

‘Listen to this, right.’ Craig looked up from the paper, pages flipping and skipping in the wind. The sunlight made his hair look grey, an ugly kind of colour. ‘Dear Kate… Please help me. My boyfriend and I have been sleeping together…’

‘SNORE!’ Joel said, not looking up from his hands. He was having trouble holding the skins down in the breeze. He pinned them to the maths book on his lap and I watched him roach a corner from it, wondering when he'd be finished.

‘Just wait, alright?’ Craig grinned, looking back to the page. ‘My boyfriend and I have been sleeping together for over a year and just recently I've begun to wet myself during orgasm…’

‘Fuck me!’ Joel looked up from his hands. ‘How fucking rough is that!’

‘My boyfriend says it doesn't matter…’

‘Yeah right,’ Joel sniggered. ‘I bet he does.’

‘But my confidence is suffering and now I can't have sex at all. A Boyzone fan, 21.’

‘Well that's her fucking problem right there.’ Joel finished rolling, tapped it once against the flat of the book. His hair was dark, hanging down across his face towards his lap as he concentrated. ‘She's a fucking Boyzone fan.’

‘Dear Boyzone fan,’ Craig said. ‘The first thing you need to do is relax…’

‘WRONG!’ Joel twisted the end, grinning as he looked up. ‘The first thing you need to do is…’ But Craig was already nodding as they laughed it out together.

‘BUY A NAPPY!’

Craig dumped the magazine behind him on the grass as Joel laid back on his elbows. He stuck the spliff in his mouth, leaned over, and flicked the lighter. I watched him cup one hand round it so it didn't get blown out. He frowned while he did it, I saw, kind of squinting as he looked for the flame. I heard the thud of a football somewhere quite a way behind us, and a scream, small and quiet on the wind, as someone shouted cunt.

I saw Holly when I looked up. She was steering her way through the goal posts and down the slope where we were sitting. The wind flicked her skirt up, like the holes in the football net. It made her legs look even longer.

There was a nudge in my side as she sat down, stretched herself out and leaned back in the grass. Craig was holding out a cigarette.

‘Lambert and Butler are fucking rough,’ I said.

‘Oh right.’ He took it back. ‘And what do you smoke then?’

I didn't like the sarcasm in his voice. ‘B&H,’ I said.

‘They're half an inch shorter.’

‘Yeah.’ I looked away. ‘But it's all in the filter.’

Holly sniffed as she looked over at us but her eyes didn't stay on me for long.

‘Guess what,’ she said, and everyone turned. ‘I missed a period.’

‘Really?’ I bit my lip, wishing it hadn't come out sounding so interested. Still, I was kind of surprised any period of Holly's would dare not turn up.

‘Yeah?’ Joel grinned around the spliff. ‘You pregnant then?’

She shrugged. ‘I'm on the pill… but it's only 97 per cent reliable.’

‘Does that mean you'll only have 3 per cent of a baby?’ I said. It was meant to be a joke, but she barely looked at me, opening her bag. Inside was a box of hair dye –that pastel-blue colour that always means it's come from Boots. I wondered how a tint of mahogany-plum was going to help her period turn up.

‘I got to do this,’ she said. She took the box out, but instead of a shiny, manageable, nourished head, it had a picture of a pregnant stomach. Pregnancy Test, it said, and Put your mind at rest. I wondered how it was going to put her mind at rest if she ended up looking like the stomach on the front. ‘It cost a fiver: tight or what. You're s'posed to buy two,’ she said. ‘But that'd be a tenner. I bought a little pill instead.’

‘Put your mind at rest,’ Joel said, and she laughed.

I had to wonder why she was bothered about money at all, though. She worked as a waitress in a wholefood café called The Herb Garden. She got paid £4 an hour to get stoned and serve hot crusty rolls to the coolest people in town. It didn't sound like a bad job to me.

‘What do you do with it?’ Joel said.

‘Piss on it.’

She looked down at it, considering, and I watched her push a strand of hair back from where the wind had put it. She had long nails, and the sunlight made them look cleaner than they were. Skinning-up nails, she called them.

‘And?’ he said.

‘And if it turns blue you start looking for a good-sized coat hanger.’

I didn't think she had anything to worry about, though, there was no way Holly could be pregnant. I'd read that you had to see a counsellor when you had an abortion, one of two categories. Either a fifty-year-old guy with half-moon spectacles and a frown that's too big for his face, or a woman of the same age with unshaved legs, shin-length skirts and too many smiles. I couldn't see Holly talking to anyone like that.

But then, I couldn't really see Holly talking to anyone at all. Except maybe in my fantasies, when she'd come running up to me and say This terrible thing has happened! Oh God! I'm so unhappy! I have to talk to someone and you're the only one I trust… And somehow I couldn't see that happening anytime soon.

Joel stretched. The sun coming from behind him made his cheeks look dusty, I could see the tiny hairs. As he took another drag, I felt his hand flop down on to my thigh.

And it was just as I looked up, past Joel's bitten fingernails and on to Holly's face, that I spotted Robin. He was staring at me. At us, I guess, because his eyes were over Joel's hand. His mouth was turned down around the corners and I could see his face was flinching up.

Disgusted, that was how he looked. And in the space between the conversation, he looked up at my face as well.

Disgusted, as those fingers worked their way up and under the hem. I watched Joel breathe out and the breeze whipped the smoke away, back and then gone. It looked very thick against the sky, and I wondered why he'd be disgusted with me. He could have touched me too.

Joel's thumb brushed up against my pants, fake silk, and for a little while I closed my eyes.

Disgusted, I thought. It was a nice-sounding word.

I thought about Robin that evening, watching Dad fill out some form or other. The sound of the Hoover was muffled from Michael's bedroom, and I could hear the cat was scratching to get in. I hummed, trying to rest my elbows on the table in a way that looked like Dad's. A cigarette stuck up from his left hand, holding the paper flat as he scribbled. Dad's got big knuckles, they wrinkle in spirals and he holds the cigarette between them. I've always kind of liked his hands. I watched the smoke dangle, up by his eye, and I watched him squint to keep it out.

Dad doesn't like doing forms, they make him cross because he's got better things to do with his time. I think they make him sad as well though. Usually they're all about money and filling them out reminds him that we haven't got enough, even though he works all the time. He says he feels bad because he can't afford to buy us all the things we want. I try to tell him I don't want anything and I never ask for pocket money, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. He says we're very lucky, there are loads of people much worse off than us. And he's right of course, but I know it doesn't stop him feeling bad about it. I know, because he tells me all the time.

Sitting at the kitchen table though, he wasn't saying much at all. Every now and then he'd look up at my face and I made sure I was smiling each time. Looking at him there though, still working even though it was the evening time, the smile didn't feel very real. In my stomach, I felt guilty.

He'd hate them, you see, Holly and Joel and everyone. He'd hate them all, but Robin in particular, I knew it. He'd hate the way Robin's mouth went down around the corners when he smiled. He'd hate the letters on his bag, FUCK THE LAW, SMOKE THE DRAW, stencilled in Biro. He'd hate how Robin never answered yes, just gave a little uh

I saw him cough a little, flatten down the paper, and I readied my smile just in case he looked up. Hate them, I thought, and I wondered why those words would make me feel so strange.

‘You Ok?’ he said. He looked up at my face, already settled in a grin.

‘Great,’ I said.

I watched him nod as he reached to flick the ash off. And from the other room, I heard the sound of Michael's footsteps come towards the door.

Michael's two years younger than me, but he doesn't really act it. His room's just about the only tidy place in the house. I think it looks like a hospital, what with all his toys stacked in boxes, labels on the front. I've told him it's the first step to insanity, soon he'll be washing his hands with the kettle, but Michael doesn't really listen to me. He's got a piggy bank in his room where he keeps all his pocket money, even the pennies. Every month, he stacks the coins up in order and takes them down to the bank. He's even got a stash of those sealed plastic bags.

Michael's going to be a technical genius. Dad says he's known since Michael was little, but really it started when he failed his English SATs. I remember coming home one night, when Dad had just read the report, and they were sitting at the kitchen table, both of them bent over some part out of the car. Or maybe the Kenwood mixer.

There were screwdrivers and bolts and all that other stuff that holds things together strewn out across the table. I remember thinking Mum wouldn't be using her mixer that night. Either that or we'd be walking to the bus next morning.

‘So you see…’ Dad had said. ‘This part… pushes down on this part and turns the…’

‘Mmm… Dad? I've finished the fourth level on Sonic The Hedgehog.’

‘But it turns it counter-clockwise. Can you see that?’

‘Yeah… Dad? It's got this really cool end-of-level baddy right? With this huge gun!’

I remember thinking even then that they'd do better reading him the Financial Times.

Dad looked up as Michael came in through the door, but he didn't look for long. I watched him take a puff on the cigarette. I watched it reflect back off the paper as he breathed it out.

‘So,’ he said, still writing. ‘Looking forward to Friday?’

‘Friday?’

‘I thought it was Non-uniform Day.’ He leaned back slowly, pushed the form away.

‘Oh that,’ I said. Michael walked across to the cupboard. I watched him take a loaf of Kingsmill out. ‘It's no big deal.’

‘What're you going to wear then?’

‘Haven't thought about it much,’ I said, but I guess that was a lie. I'd been through just about every outfit my wardrobe would cough up. None of them looked normal.

‘Probably just jeans,’ I said.

‘Jeans? Is that what everyone wears?’

‘Pretty much,’ I said, and I heard a snigger from behind. ‘What?’ I looked round.

‘Nothing.’ Michael reached for the margarine. ‘Just that you've got no imagination.’

‘Right,’ I turned away. ‘So what are you going to wear? I saved you some Kleenex boxes…’ I don't think he's a technical genius anyway. I think he's just crap at English.

‘God,’ Dad said. ‘People in school are such arseholes aren't they.’ I didn't answer him, though, it didn't sound like a question. ‘Can't even be an individual anymore.’

‘No…’

‘Anyway.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘I guess it's up to you what you wear.’ He caught my eyes, halfway to reaching for his Biro again. ‘Just a shame you don't want to break out from them anymore…’ he said. And looking across at me, he did seem kind of sad.

I thought about Robin all through dinner, Robin and Non-uniform Day. I wondered what he'd like to see me wearing, or if he'd even care, and I ran back through my list of clothes. Short skirts and a jumper, long skirts and a little top. I tried to remember everything he'd said, something that might give me a clue. I couldn't think of anything, not straight off, but it was funny. I kind of liked the idea of dressing just for him.

I thought about it while we ate and after, with Mum stacking the dishes away. I thought about it and I smiled. Right up until the phone rang.

I was flicking through the Radio Times when I saw Ren and Stimpy was on. Ren and Stimpy, Robin's favourite television programme, I knew because I'd heard him do the voices, and I wondered how I'd look next day, just wandering across the pitch. Hey, anyone see Ren and Stimpy last night?

‘Dad…?’ I looked up at him, past Michael on the sofa, and I heard the clink of dishes as Mum shut a cupboard door. ‘Fancy watching Ren and Stimpy tonight?’

‘Ren and what?’ He picked his beer can up, but he hadn't said no yet.

‘Ren and Stimpy. It's this really cool cartoon. A bit like Tom and Jerry, only…’ Only I didn't know a single thing about it. ‘Only cooler. Like a cult,’ I said. Dad liked cults, he'd told me, and I watched his head pick up. ‘Everyone watches it in school.’

‘Oh…’ he said. ‘Well, I was going to ask if you fancied watching a family movie.’

Michael sat up. ‘I'll watch a movie. What about Predator?’ he said, but Dad only glanced around, even though he loves all those explosions and stuff. It's strange though, every time we put on an Arnie movie, Mum suddenly gets an insatiable urge to clean the fish tank. And we don't even have a fish tank.

Dad pushed a finger round the rim of his beer.

‘I mean, I can see you want to watch it if it's… if it's the in thing or whatever. Like wearing the same clothes as everyone else.’ He paused. ‘I'm just a bit knackered. You know, I have been out at work all day. I was hoping we could all watch a movie together.’

‘Terminator?’ Michael said as Mum walked back across the room.

‘You don't mind, do you?’ Dad looked over at me. ‘I thought it'd be nice…’

‘I…’ Dad watched me, a funny kind of look on his face, and I thought about him bending over that form. I thought about Holly too, though. Holly and Robin and how they'd dissect the episode tomorrow. I'd sit in the corner as usual. I'd sit there in silence again. ‘Couldn't we watch a film afterwards? It's only half an hour long.’

‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Is it really that important? I've been waiting all day to finish work, get all that fucking paperwork out of the way, so we could all sit down and watch a family film. Does that really sound so boring?’

He stared at me, with Michael staring too, and smirking.

‘You can't always have it your own way,’ Michael said. ‘We want to watch a family movie, you're outvoted.’

‘Hang on.’ Mum was sitting down, picking up the newspaper. ‘Outvoted on what?’ Mum likes Pride and Prejudice and Emma and stuff like that. Dad says if he wanted to watch a bunch of uptight English people in stupid clothes then he'd put on the Queen's speech every Christmas. I have to say, usually I'd agree. Mum gives good reasons and that, for not liking explosions, I mean. She says there's no plot or character development. But I think the real reason she hates them isn't because of the lack of sub-textual conflict, it's because of the lack of A-line taffeta ball gowns. No taffeta ball gowns in Predator. Just a lot of dirty vests and people saying Make my day, motherfucker!

‘Me and Dad want to watch a family movie.’ Michael held a hand out towards the TV. I thought he looked a bit like an estate agent. ‘But she wants to watch some stupid cartoon that no one's ever seen before. So she's outvoted.’

‘Well…’ Mum looked round at me. ‘Maybe I'd like to watch this cartoon too.’

‘What?’ Dad turned away from me. ‘You don't even know what it is. You don't want to watch it.’

‘I…’ I opened my mouth to tell him that it didn't matter but he wasn't looking at me. I was kind of relieved.

‘Well maybe I do, Philip. Maybe we don't want to watch… Slash and Mutilate II.’

‘Well maybe…’ Michael's voice was getting louder as he glanced across at Dad, ‘no one cares what you think. We're going to watch a family movie.’ Dad nodded.

‘Oh,’ Mum stared at him. ‘So I don't get a say at all then, is that it?’

‘We have just discussed it, Liz. Please don't start sticking your bloody oar in.’

‘Is that right?’ Mum was nodding. The kind of nod that says she doesn't agree at all.

They never agree on much, though. Not that other parents agree more than they do, it's just that mine like to air their grievances on a regular basis. Dad says it's healthier that way. I think so too.

‘Is that right?’ Michael made a face like Mum's. He was pretty good at voices too, but then I guess he learned it from a pro. I watched Mum open her mouth, dumb, like a fish in a glass bowl. And that was when the phone rang.

I was kind of glad, walking into the kitchen. Even if it is healthier to air your grievances, sometimes it gets kind of noisy. It makes Dad sad as well. I know it does, even though he doesn't say so. Dad's like that, though, he says he's not the sort of person to burden others with his feelings.

Picking up the receiver, half listening to things wind down next door I played with the light-pull in one hand. I'd look good, I thought, just standing there and toying with it. I'd look good if anyone was watching.

‘Hello?’ the voice said.

I almost didn't recognize it.

I remember, when I was eleven, I used to pretend my best friend was raping me. We did it on the bottom bunk and I used to have to push the Care Bears out of the way. Dawn had four Care Bears, and I was always kind of jealous of that. She had lots of stuff I was jealous of; her stepdad bought it so that he didn't have to be nice to her. He was nice to me, though, which made me feel a bit bad. He was always asking her why she couldn't be more like me, which I thought was stupid because she was obviously trying. I can remember wishing that I had a stepdad who didn't like me too. Not that I wanted anyone but my own dad, I never would have wished for that, just that it would have been nice to have all her stuff.

Dawn was always ill. She had really bad asthma and kept a contraption at home with a face mask for when she had fits. She'd been born with a hole in the heart, which I thought sounded kind of romantic. The scar down her chest wasn't romantic, though, it looked a bit like Frankenstein. She was allergic to every animal I'd even bothered to ask about, but her mum didn't seem to mind. She kept two dogs and four cats and Dawn spent her whole life walking round the edges of rooms to avoid them.

Her room was really small and it had a fish tank at one end because she wasn't allergic to fish. Not that I ever saw any fish, just a plastic treasure chest and lots of pond weed. I thought the fish had died a long time ago, a bit like her real dad, but I never told Dawn that. She had bunk beds there, even though she didn't have any brothers or sisters. There were butterflies on the duvet covers, and her room was always tidy because her mum did it for her. I had a weird idea about Dawn's mum and her bedroom. I didn't believe her Mum picked up anything at all, I saw her a bit like Mary Poppins, where she'd just stand by the fish tank and magic things into drawers. Probably singing while she did it. I don't know why I thought that; Dawn's mum didn't look a bit like Mary Poppins, and she had a really croaky voice. She smoked a lot of cheap cigarettes.

When we weren't talking about her asthma or her allergies, Dawn and me would go up to her room and play The Game. It didn't have a name because we never talked about it, so I just thought of it as The Game. Dawn would stand outside for a couple of minutes and I'd sit on my own, staring at the fish tank. I'd pretend I was sitting on a park bench somewhere and looking at a lake. A lake with no fish. And then, after a while, Dawn would open the door really quietly. I could hear it anyway but that wasn't the point. She'd creep up and grab me and say something that never seemed to fit. I remember wishing that she wouldn't say anything at all. That way I wouldn't have to hear her voice.

‘There's no point in screaming. There's no one here so just shut up!’

I'd scream anyway because that was part of the rules, but I'd always do it quietly. Dawn's mum liked to nap in the afternoon and she got pretty grumpy if anyone woke her.

‘What do you want?’ I'd say. ‘Leave me alone!’ And she'd drag me over to the bed, only she never had to drag very hard. I was heavier than her and if I'd tried to stay put she probably would have had an asthma attack. She'd fling me down on the bed and put a hand over my mouth. I remember she had very dry skin on her hands, wrinkled like an old person's, and I had to press my lips in while she got on top so I wouldn't have to feel it. She'd bounce up and down then, and I'd say

‘Stop! Please don't! Stop!’ But of course I didn't want her to.

We'd bang our hips together for ages and it felt nice even though it hurt. It felt good and I didn't want to stop. We never touched each other. Well, I never did very much at all, I just liked to lie there. I liked to be underneath.

And there was nothing friendly about it, or pretty or nice. It didn't even feel naughty. It just felt like something that needed to be done.

We used to pretend we were twins, me and Dawn, even though we looked nothing like each other, and I was kind of glad about it. I thought she was pretty funny-looking, even then. Tall and gawky and her hair was always pretty greasy. We put each other's make-up on. Well, I put hers on, I didn't want her touching mine. We had baths together, and she was a really early developer. She had tons of hair, in her armpits, on her legs, and I remember wondering if all that hair was as greasy as the stuff on her head. She'd started her periods too, even though we were still at Primary.

‘Everyone laughs,’ she said. ‘They can all see the log…’ She stared sadly at the fish tank. Like that was romantic or something.

‘The log?’ I thought it sounded pretty barbaric, all that rough bark.

‘The sanitary towel! Don't tell me you haven't seen them laughing,’ she said. So I didn't.

I scuffed my shoes against pink carpet, sitting on the bed. ‘Why don't you wear tampons?’

‘I'm too heavy – my flow. I'm not lucky like some people, they don't stop the blood.’

‘Is there a lot of blood, then?’ I hadn't started my periods, and Mum had never given me The Talk. Instead she put The Body Book in my Christmas stocking one year. I was pretty disappointed actually, I'd been hoping for a Gameboy. ‘Like, really loads?’

‘Enough to turn a bath red.’

‘Really?’ From then on, I decided, she'd be getting in the bath after me.

‘And black bits too.’ She looked down at her nails like there might still be some there. ‘Like clots. Clots of blood or something.’ She shook her head, really long and slow. ‘Miss said last year I could be a really good swimmer, Olympic standard, she said. Can hardly swim now, can I? Not when they can all see it in my costume!’

‘No,’ I said, but I didn't really know what she was worried about. No one ever looked at her costume in swimming. The acne on her back was loads more interesting.

‘I could have been really good at something…’ she said. I didn't bother to disagree.

Sometimes I found bruises on my pelvis after I'd been to Dawn's house. Little purple yellow things that spread over the bony bits. I used to press them to see what colour they turned under pressure. I don't think I ever showed Dawn the bruises, I don't think I wanted her to see. But I never minded them. When I got home I'd take my trousers off and search around to find one. I remember thinking that they looked kind of pretty.