Cute. He’d never normally consider anything under sixteen, frankly it wasn’t worth the hassle and they never knew what to do anyway, but this new girl looked like she’d know plenty, like she might want to have some fun instead of doling out kisses like rewards, as was the habit of most of these little teases. Three out of ten for face – unmissable nose, pasty skin – but her breasts were a ten. And the look in her eyes was an eleven. He grinned at her.

Bloody hell. Is he looking at me?

Anna looked behind her but when she turned back he was still looking, still grinning, with something resembling a question in the lift of his eyebrows. She could smile back, but the moment seemed to demand more than that. She had next to no time to think about it – this was her chance to make an impression he might not forget. She winked.

And that was how it started.

‘I’m going to ask Ben to be my mixed-doubles partner,’ said Chrissie to everyone within earshot in the changing rooms after tennis. Anna’s ears pricked up at the sound of his name.

‘Chrissie, you can’t,’ said one of her friends. ‘He’s been teamed up with Jayne Borham since forever.’

‘Jayne Borham has no net game,’ said Chrissie. ‘She didn’t even make the first team last season so there’s no way Ben will stay with her. He’ll be looking and I want to make sure I’m the one he sees.’

‘But he’s sixteen.’

‘So?’

‘You’re fourteen.’

‘Almost fifteen. And I have twice as many trophies as Jayne bloody Borham.’

Chrissie and Ben would make a tennis pair that would look as if they were two models on a break from a Ralph Lauren shoot.

‘Ben will go to one of the older girls.’

‘Don’t be a dickhead,’ said Chrissie. ‘No decent player in Year 11 is going to want a new partner, not if they’re winning. What’s the point?’

‘The chance to hang out with Ben,’ said one girl dreamily.

‘Tough,’ said Chrissie, ‘because he’ll be hanging out with me.’

But it was not to be. The following week Ben Latimer did what very few had ever dared to do. He said no to Chrissie Morton. The news spread around Clareville like wildfire.

‘Watch out, Chrissie will be a total bitch today,’ said Jemima.

Jemima sat next to Anna in registration and was now the nearest thing Anna had to a friend. Sometimes a clumsy silence stretched between them, but nevertheless it was a relief to have someone to eat lunch with once in a while. She liked Jemima but she couldn’t imagine trusting her with secrets. Wasn’t that what real friendship was? A willingness to share what you thought, who you really were? To offer more of yourself than you gave to the world in general. She wouldn’t tell Jemima, for example, that she was nurturing something of an obsession with Ben Latimer. Nor that she liked to watch Chrissie Morton from a safe distance, convinced that she could learn something from her, even though she was not yet sure exactly what that would be.

‘She even asked her father to ask his father,’ said Jemima, ‘they know each other from some NGO board, but Ben’s answer was a still a firm no.’

‘Do we know why?’

‘Apparently he’s not even playing tennis this year. Teri Spencer in Year 11 said that’s been on the cards for ages. He needs good exam results.’

‘What for?’ What would someone as privileged and good-looking as Ben need with exam results?

‘Dunno,’ said Jemima, obviously thinking the same.

‘Poor Chrissie.’ Chrissie had been boasting all week about how she and Ben were going to storm the national championships. How humiliating. ‘She must be devastated.’ It was surprisingly straightforward to feel sympathy for someone quite so beautiful, fashionable and rich.

Jemima snorted. ‘She was so convinced and now she’s made a total tit of herself. I’m not sure if anyone’s said no to her before. Ever.’

‘Don’t you think she must find it hard to live up to herself sometimes?’ High standards could be a bitch to maintain. Often she wished that people would stop referring to her as academically gifted so that she might be congratulated for her achievements rather than terrified of getting a B. Normal people were able to feel scared about failing, but she constantly had to excel otherwise she’d draw attention to her limitations. Probably Chrissie felt the same way about popularity.

Jemima looked at her as if she was out of her mind. ‘What I wouldn’t give for her problems. Apparently she’s been crying in the toilets all morning.’

Anna had five spare minutes before French and so she ducked into the girls’ toilets on the third floor. Most likely Chrissie would be surrounded by girls offering commiserations and she could nip in and out unnoticed. She just couldn’t bear to think of anyone crying in the toilets all alone. Even if it was Chrissie Morton in a bad mood.

At first the third-floor toilets appeared to be empty, but then she heard a thick unctuous sniff. She bent down and peered under the doors of the stalls, looking carefully so that eventually she saw Chrissie tucking up her grey Chanel boots in a half-hearted attempt to hide her feet.

She knocked gently on the toilet door, her fingers tracing the gouged graffiti that had been painted over more than once but would never disappear. I ♥ ROB, it said, and she wondered how it felt to like someone so much that you needed to tell the world.

‘Chrissie?’ she ventured. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Piss off and leave me alone.’

‘Teri Spencer said he was going to retire this year anyway.’

The door was flung open and there stood the most popular girl in school with watery eyes and a red nose. Her immaculate complexion was blotchy with distress. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘It’s you. What are you doing here?’ Chrissie looked past her, as if checking that there wasn’t something better over her shoulder.

‘Somebody told me you were crying. I wanted to see if you were all right.’ When you stared directly into Chrissie’s eyes, especially now when they were red-rimmed, she looked younger and more real. The warm brown of them was probably the softest thing about her. Anna turned away.

‘You haven’t the faintest idea,’ snapped Chrissie. ‘I have plenty of friends, why would I talk to you?’

‘I just thought …’

‘… that I’d be all, like, oh how sweet of you? We’d chat and then we’d be the best of friends? Please. Half the time I forget you’re at this school and the other half I think your name is Hannah. Now bugger off and leave me with my misery.’

‘Is there anything you need?’ People were touchy when they were upset. Chrissie didn’t mean it.

‘Have you got a cigarette?’ said Chrissie.

‘I could ask around?’

‘For a cigarette? Don’t bother. Forget I asked. Forget you ever saw me. Forget I’m alive.’ She dissolved into fetching sobs.

Anna rolled her eyes and dug deep into her canvas knapsack, unearthing a crumpled packet of Lucky Strike. ‘It’s my last one,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to share it.’

Chrissie stopped crying immediately and looked over in shock. She took the lone cigarette from the pack, lit it with her silver Zippo, took a deep drag and then passed it back. ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ she said.

Anna didn’t, not really. A bit, that’s all. It was something she’d tried a few times. The pack had been in her bag for weeks, mainly so that her parents wouldn’t find it and give her a hard time about it. ‘You think my name is Hannah,’ said Anna. ‘I think that tells us how many things you know about me.’

Chrissie pushed open a window. ‘Sorry, but sometimes it’s a pain in arse being popular,’ she said. ‘People care about what you do.’ She poached the cigarette back for a second pull. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘No, probably not,’ said Anna.

Chrissie blew out her cigarette smoke in a practised plume that went straight outside. ‘You’ve got very cool eyes. But you should wear less eyeliner.’

‘You sound like my dad.’

Chrissie laughed and when she did Anna wondered why that single peal of laughter made her feel more proud than a week of straight As.

‘I’m sorry about Ben,’ she said.

Chrissie kicked the toilet pedestal with her foot. ‘Wanker.’

‘Twat,’ offered Anna.

‘Yeah,’ said Chrissie. ‘That too.’

Sixteen weeks raced by and at the end of term it felt as if she had achieved loads. She said as much to Mrs Mackenzie when they had a little chat.

‘I’m asking all the new girls to see me,’ she said. ‘Just to be sure that you’ve settled in. Are you making friends?’

What was she supposed to say? She was still as unsettled as on her very first day. She was a wallflower, clinging to the edges of every situation and eclipsed by brighter blooms. But she got away with it by permanently pretending to be in a bad mood, hoping to build a reputation as something of an enigma. Her father wanted her to make the most of this opportunity and had warned against isolating herself, as she had done at her last school. But it was hard to fit in when you were unsure of your place.

If friendship was a genuine interest in others then she would have to say that her only friend was Chrissie. She had a confidence that was compelling. Chrissie seemed to know who she was and where she was going. Yet Chrissie barely acknowledged her existence.

‘Everybody’s being very friendly, thank you,’ she said, appropriately bland and inoffensive.

Catriona Mackenzie was thinking that Anna was one of the most self-contained young ladies she had come across in a while. ‘Are you happy?’ she said.

‘What fifteen-year-old girl ever is?’ said Anna mournfully. ‘I’m kidding,’ she added, when she saw alarm cloud Mrs Mackenzie’s face. ‘I’m perfectly happy.’

‘I’m hearing good things about you.’

‘It’s an honour just to be here,’ she said. ‘Seriously, I mean that.’

‘And have you given any thought to what kind of career you might want to pursue?’

Of course she had. When she was five years old she had wanted to be a mermaid; at nine, a teacher like her dad; now she was currently consumed by the idea of being a world-renowned journalist, reporting back from disaster zones in fatigues and a flak jacket. But Mrs Mackenzie probably meant her question to apply to the real world.

When she’d talked to her dad about it he said there were two kinds of people in the world. Those who watched the world and those who shaped it.

‘A good journalist, a really good one, can be either,’ he’d said, tapping his index finger on a story he was reading in the newspaper about an unknown struggle in a forgotten corner of Africa. ‘You could shape the world, Anna, imagine that.’

‘Maybe a writer?’ she said now to Mrs Mackenzie, knowing that she didn’t sound very convincing. ‘Right now I’m focused on getting to a good university; I have my heart set on Oxford or Cambridge,’ she said. ‘There’re bound to be more opportunities to decide the greater future there.’ An Oxbridge education was the country’s great leveller. She knew that. Graduate from one or the other and it didn’t matter where you came from, everybody watched where you were going instead.

Her sensible answer left Mrs Mackenzie reassured.

‘I’m very happy,’ she said again and Mrs Mackenzie let her go.

The truth was that she felt more pressure than ever pushing her forward to a brilliant future now that this magnificent Clareville education had been bestowed upon her. Her father had been well into his forties by the time she was born; now in his late fifties it was a risky time for a career move. He had done it for her. He had given up everything to work at this school, swallowing left-wing principles entrenched since his own student days, and entering the rarefied world of private education. It was his way of saying, ‘I love you’.

The problem with everyone telling you that you’re destined for great things is feeling like you’re letting them down when you do something stupid.

And Anna felt as if she did stupid things all the time.

On the penultimate day of term there was to be a ball. It sounded suspiciously like some streamers in the assembly hall and a busload of St Anthony’s boys to be exasperated by, so it was a struggle to get excited. Anna said as much to Jemima.

‘But what will you do instead?’ asked Jemima.

‘Start my English literature essay,’ she said and watched her gasp, actually gasp, with unconcealed pity. ‘I’m joking.’

‘You could wear that dress you bought in the sale last weekend. It’s a great dress, it makes you look all sort of voluptuous,’ said Jemima.

The dress she hadn’t dared show to her parents. She’d bought new underwear too.

‘Ben will be there,’ added Jemima with a little giggle.

A lesser girl would have blushed, and though she did feel the heat rising to her face she controlled it, an odd talent her father said she had inherited from his side of the family.

She knew that she wasn’t the prettiest girl at the party, and she wasn’t the nicest either, but from the way the boys kept looking at her, and the way she felt inside, she sensed that perhaps she was sort of sexy? Anna felt a buzz of confidence, which instinctively made her suck in her stomach and walk a little taller.

Am I?

She felt the familiar pull to blend into the background, to sit out all the dances in the shadows with a detached cynical air. She had never had a boyfriend, hardly even been kissed unless you counted the off-target lunge by a spotty youth outside Streatham KFC last year (which she most definitely did not), and though the St Anthony’s boys all looked very handsome in their smart shirts and trousers she didn’t have a clue what she would say to any of them.

Voluptuous, Jemima had said.

Wasn’t that just a posh word for chubby?

Luckily it was a typically segregated school dance and only the established couples and the downright whorish started snogging before the slow dances. Meanwhile the boys snaffled smuggled alcohol on the sidelines while the girls danced in circles of four or five and pretended their shoes didn’t hurt, so she had plenty of time to sit around and look moody.

It was hours before the two schools began to mix properly. Only when the pace of the disco began to slow, and the boys saw their chances of a smooch and snog narrow, did they start to make belated forays across the gender divide.

Anna saw a St Anthony’s boy she didn’t know making his way straight towards her.

Her heart sank and she tried to think of something, anything, to talk about. Would he ask her to dance? She didn’t even know if she could. Would she be expected to put her arms around a virtual stranger and hold him as close as she’d ever held anyone?

And what then? What when the music ended?

All these worries blurred together into a bellyful of anxiety and she could only pray that she wasn’t getting a rash on her neck the way she sometimes did when she was terrified. She was in desperate need of a glass of water.

The unknown boy was getting closer and closer. But then she saw him stop short and veer away. She turned that way to see what had dissuaded him and found herself face to perfect face with her crush. It was clear that the other boy had spotted Ben moving in and decided that he didn’t stand a chance.

‘I’m Ben Latimer.’ Ben smiled and artfully manoeuvred himself so that he was closer to her than any boy had ever been, including the one who had kissed her.

‘Anna,’ she said. ‘Anna Page.’

‘Lovely.’

Ben was so popular he was practically famous. He was beautiful. All she could do was stare up at him hopelessly, clenching her hands into fists to stop herself from reaching out like a total loser and pushing back the lock of hair that fell onto his forehead. He was asking her about her plans for the weekend and she managed to bumble something crap about ‘family’ and ‘telly’.

‘How come I don’t know you?’ he said.

‘I have no idea,’ she blurted, and felt like an idiot.

‘Do you want to go for a bit of a walk out back? Or something?’

He had a handful of tiny freckles on his upper lip that she wanted to lick. She was breathing so heavily she was convinced that he would be able to hear her. She must stink of desire. ‘Sure,’ she murmured.

She did not see the death stares that were coming at her from the other side of the room.

He placed his hand around her waist and guided her through the crowd with his palm on the small of her back.

People were looking at them.

He kept his mouth close to her ear and she could feel the warmth of his breath with every word so it felt as if they were inside a bubble, oblivious. He could have taken her anywhere. If he’d led her up to the edge of a cliff and told her to fly off she would have thought that she could. He was so tall that he had to stoop to be close to her. He wanted to be close to her. She hoped that someone somewhere was taking their picture so that later, when she was able to convince herself that it didn’t really happen, she would have proof.

‘St Anthony’s has loads of dark corners,’ he said. ‘I think that’s why they always have these things here at Clareville. They pretend we come to you in the spirit of chivalry, but really they need to keep an eye on us. Luckily …’

He banged his backside against a fire door and it opened, letting in a flood of cool air.

‘… they don’t alarm the building when there’s a function going on.’

They emerged into the cold damp night a few metres away from the hall, the muted music thumping a deadened bass into the dark playing fields. Ben immediately wrapped his arm tighter around her, so that leaning into his chest seemed the most natural thing to do.

‘Or else you’ll freeze,’ he said.

She silently thanked her parents for choosing Clareville, for moving the family home, for choosing each other, for giving birth to her. Without them she wouldn’t be here. Here. With Ben. All sorts of crazy tickles were racing through her body, before settling between her bare thighs and making her hypersensitive to every inch of him so close to her. The part of her beneath the weight of his arm felt in danger of melting. When he looked down into her eyes and grinned she thought she might be having a heart attack.

Is this normal?

They walked away from the hall, further into the darkness until they were shielded by the back wall of a maintenance shed. She was getting mud on her best shoes. She didn’t care. She licked her lips, they felt warm. Out in the dark with Ben.

‘Do you want to smoke?’ he said.

She spoke without really thinking. ‘Maybe after,’ she said.

And Ben knew he was going to like this girl.

She wasn’t sure who smiled first but slowly they both did, the smile growing with anticipation and understanding, until they were grinning at each other and the tickles between her legs had turned to fireworks. She wanted him to touch her.

‘After?’ he said, tipping his head to one side and wondering if she was real. He had a bulge in his trousers. The inky pupils at the centre of his eyes pulsed and grew bigger as she watched them. She was suffused with a heady feeling, as if she was floating. It was so cold, but she felt as if she was burning.

He lowered his mouth onto hers.

Oh my God.

His lips were warm and wet, and he pressed her mouth so that it opened slightly. As he did so his roaming hand traced the seam of her dress under her arm and trailed lightly along the swell of her breast.

Her pelvis flip-flopped. I’m kissing Ben.

Her thoughts faded until she was left with only sensation under the skilled touch of his hands. He caressed every inch of her available skin, and gradually slipped his fingertips in and out of her neckline, grazing the top of her breasts with his palms until her body was urging him to press harder, to kiss more savagely. She kissed him like she wanted to be kissed and he pulled her closer to him, pressing their lower bodies together in a coarse movement that made her legs give way. He hooked one hand under the curve of her bum to hold her upright and rammed his tongue into her while she recovered. Then finally he grabbed a handful of the spectacular boobs that he had wanted all along. He took great satisfaction from her groan of pleasure. Thanks to his steady pace his wandering fingers had figured out exactly how to unfasten her dress. He deftly did so and peeled the top half away from her, never losing the lip-to-lip contact she seemed so hungry for.

How on earth had he managed to unhook and unzip her dress? But she didn’t have time to mind as the hot sensations continued to curl her spine on its end.

Panting, he stepped back and took in the sight of those tits in a fancy bra. She was so pale that she lit herself. Then he set about familiarizing himself with the fastenings of her bra by touch alone.

‘You are gorgeous,’ he whispered, ‘so sexy, so horny. I just want to kiss you.’

Never in her wildest fantasies would she have imagined that her first real kiss would be with someone like Ben. Until tonight she had wondered if she would ever be kissed properly at all. So going from nothing to this was making her head spin. Was this too far? Should she tell him to stop? But why? Why would she tell him to stop when she wanted him to go on and on and on?

When her bra fell open, she knew that now she really should say something but she didn’t; instead she caught her breath while he stepped back to look at her. She stood in the dark wet grass, her new dress pushed down around her waist, and felt utterly desirable, a feeling which sent shockwaves of pleasure rippling through her until she thought she might pass out from the sheer thrill of it.

She placed her own hands on her shoulders and ran them across her curves. They locked eyes and she moaned softly without thinking, licking her lips and feeling more excited than she had when they were kissing.

This is heaven.

Ben’s hands, when he lay them on her bare skin, were tentative and icy cold, kick-starting more tremors that escalated when, after a couple of minutes of ecstatic groping, he bent his mouth to her stiffened nipples and kissed her.

‘You,’ he said between mouthfuls, ‘are disgracefully sexy, and you know it.’

She felt in control, more in control than she ever had before, acutely aware that she was driving him wild, that she had something he wanted, badly, but then the voice of caution came from deep down in her staunchly sensible gut, and she knew that she had to say no.

‘Enough,’ she said.

He broke off, panting slightly, and was very slow to smile. She reached down for the straps of her bra, then her dress, and struggled briefly with the fastenings while he watched her. His mouth was set in a neutral line and she hoped that he wasn’t pissed off with her for stopping him. He flipped two cigarettes out of his packet and lit one for her. When his breathing returned to normal so did his easy grin, his perfect teeth gleaming. She was relieved. The bleak, soggy school playing fields were fine for a first kiss, but there was no way she was losing her virginity against the wall of a maintenance shed. At fifteen. Though after tonight she could hardly wait to lose it.

If this was kissing then sex would be awesome.

They entered the school the way they had come, slipping back into the crowded hall.

‘You probably want to see your friends,’ he said. ‘But later we could, you know, maybe …’

‘Maybe,’ she said. He squeezed her hand and then let it go. She watched him walk away. She was shaking slightly and she no longer knew whether it was from the cold, or from him.

She slipped into the girls’ toilets and found an empty cubicle, flipped the seat shut and sat down.

Oh. My. GOD. She closed her eyes to recall the sensation of standing half-naked in front of him, how grateful he had been, how for a brief moment when he had seemed nervous and unsure she had been the one in command. She had felt unbelievably powerful. Her breasts were still tingling with lust. She sat for a while and collected her thoughts. For a moment she wondered if they might have been observed, if someone might have seen her standing bare-breasted in a field. How had she found the nerve? Ben, that was how. He made her feel confident in herself.

She was a brain, a bore, a mouse. He could have anyone, anyone, and he had chosen her. She felt invincible all of sudden, like the world was hers, offering her every opportunity she could think of. A silly grin crept over her face and she hugged her knees to her chest with suppressed glee.

Back in the assembly hall Jemima ran towards her, stumbling in her kitten heels in an effort to hear all the gossip first, and as soon as humanly possible. With Jemima were a handful of girls Anna hardly knew.

‘Ohmigod, did you kiss him?’

‘What happened?’

‘What was it like?’

‘What did he say?’

‘What did you say?’

‘How do you feel?’

Before she could summon an answer, Chrissie Morton cut through the crowd like a queen at court. When the girls parted to let her through they even dipped their heads in a half bow, perhaps in deference to Chrissie’s superior popularity.

Chrissie laced an arm through Anna’s in a sisterly fashion, neatly ignoring the fact that they had barely spoken all term. ‘Tell me everything,’ she said, leaning in so close to Anna that their foreheads were practically touching.

Jemima and the others backed off, jaws slack. Anna caught and savoured a glimpse of their faces as she, the new girl, was drawn into the confidence of the ultimate alpha-teen. Where should she begin?

‘Ben has never paid that kind of attention to a girl in our year before,’ said Chrissie. ‘Never. You must be special. Watch out for Bethany Ewart, though, she’s snogged Ben a few times, probably thinks she’s his bloody girlfriend. She might start on you.’

‘Start?’

‘Stick with me,’ said Chrissie. ‘They’ll all leave you alone when they see that we’re friends.’

The stamp of approval from the most gorgeous, most popular, most desired boy in town still felt fresh on her lips. ‘We’re not friends, Chrissie,’ she said. ‘Are we?’

‘Of course we are!’

Two

Chrissie Morton knew what counted in this world. Looks and money. When she was five years old, on her very first day at school, Chrissie selected her first best friend. She chose a blonde girl with blue eyes to perfectly offset her own persuasive Bambi browns. The girl was almost as pretty as she was.

Almost.

But nowhere near as rich.

Though she had changed her best friend several times over the years she had consistently given the impression of immense popularity, though she knew deep down that nobody came close to understanding her and this sometimes made her feel lonely and sad. Nevertheless, Chrissie Morton was the princess of Year 10. Looks and money were hers; she had everything that mattered.

And anyone who dared to disagree was quite obviously jealous.

When school started again after the holidays, Chrissie and Anna started walking the halls of Clareville together and many over-plucked eyebrows were raised at this new and unlikely friendship, but Chrissie would have let her natural roots grow back in before she admitted the full story. Anna was clever. That was obvious to all. And Chrissie was not. She needed a friend like Anna.

Her intellectual failings were something she had managed to conceal quite artfully up to this point, but now